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Essays, 


HISTORICAL    AND     BIOGRAPHICAL, 

POLITICAL,  SOCIAL,  LITERARY, 

AND    SCIENTIFIC. 


BY 


HUGH   MILLER, 


AUTHOR   OF   "  THE   OLD   RED   SANDSTONE,"    "  MY    SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTERS,'' 
"the   TESTIMONY  OF   THE   ROCKS,"    ETC.,    ETC. 


EDITED,   WITH  A   PREFACE, 

By    PETER    BAYNE,  A.M. 


NEW     YORK: 
ROBERT   CARTER  AND   BROTHERS, 

530  Broadway. 
1882. 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2007  witii  funding  from 

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TJNUsrAJ  as  it  is  to  republish  newspaper  articles,  no 
apology  is  deemed  necessary  in  presenting  this  volume 
to  the  public.  At  the  time  of  Mr.  Hugh  Miller's  death, 
it  was  felt  that  a  large  proportion  of  his  contributions 
to  the  "  Witness  "  deserved  a  permanent  place  in  the 
literature  of  his  country.  They  were  recognized  as 
distinguished,  both  by  their  literary  merit  and  their 
sterling  value,  f/om  the  fugitive  and  ephemeral  produc- 
tions of  every-flay  journalism. 

Assuming  ihe  conduct  of  a  newspaper  in  the  matu« 
rity  of  his  pc<rers,  and  in  the  plenitude  of  his  literary 
and  scientific  information,  Mr.  Miller's  habit  of  compo* 
Bition  was  entirely  different  from  that  of  ordinary 
ready  writers  of  the  press.  As  was  correctly  remarked 
at  the  time  of  his  death,  "  he  did  not  work  easy,  but 


^  r\^  rxy^r', 


YI  PREFACE. 

with  laborious  special  preparation."  He  meditated  his 
articles  as  an  author  meditates  his  books  or  a  poet  his 
verses,  —  conceiving  them  as  wholes,  working  fnlly  out 
their  trains  of  thought,  enriching  them  with  far-brought 
treasures  of  fact,  and  adorning  them  with  finished  and 
apposite  illustration.  In  the  quality  of  completeness^ 
those  articles  stand,  so  far  as  I  know,  alone  in  the 
records  of  journalism.  For  rough  and  hurrying  vigor 
ihey  might  be  matched,  or  mp.re,  from  the  columns  of 
the  "  Times ; "  in  lightness  of  wit  and  smart  lucidity 
of  statement  they  might  be  surpassed  by  the  happiest 
performances  of  French  journalists,  —  a  Prevost  Far- 
adol  or  a  St.  Marc  Girardin ;  and  for  occasional  bril- 
liancies of  imagination,  and  sudden  gleams  of  piercing 
thought,  neither  they  nor  any  other  newspaper  articles 
have,  I  think,  been  comparable  with  those  of  S.  T. 
Coleridge.  But  as  complete  journalistic  essays,  sym- 
metrical in  plan,  finished  in  execution,  and  of  sustained 
and  splendid  ability,  the  articles  of  Hugh  Miller  are 
unrivalled.  For  the  most  part,  the  topic  suggesting 
them  was  but  the  occasion  for  a  display  of  the  writer*8 


PREFACE.  VII 

thought  and  imagination,  —  the  fly  round  which  the 
precious  and  imperishable  amber  of  Mr.  Miller's  genius 
was  accumulated. 

I  am  not  prepared  to  say  that  these  are  the  most 
striking  or  powerful  articles  published  in  the  "  Witness" 
by  Mr.  Miller.  He  conducted  that  paper  for  sixteen 
years ;  and,  on  a  moderate  computation,  he  wrote  for 
it  a  thousand  articles.  Having  surveyed  this  vast  field, 
I  retain  the  impression  of  a  magnificent  expenditure  of 
intellectual  energy, — an  expenditure  of  which  the  world 
will  never  estimate  the  sum.  By  far  the  larger  portion 
of  what  Mr.  Miller  wrote  for  the  "  Witness  "  is  gone 
forever.  Admirable  disquisitions  on  social  and  ethical 
questions,  felicities  of  humor  and  sportive  though  tren- 
cliant  satire,  delicate  illustration  and  racy  anecdote 
from  an  inexhaustible  literary  erudition,  and  crystal 
jets  of  the  purest  poetry,  —  such  things  will  repay  the 
careful  student  of  Uie  "  Witness  file,  but  can  never  be 
known  to  the  general  public. 

Having  done  my  utmost  in  the  way  of  compression, 

there  still  remained  about  three  volumes  of  articles, 
1* 


VIII  PREFACE. 

between  the  claims  of  which  to  republication  I  could 
not  decide.  This  most  difficult  and  delicate  task  was 
performed  by  Mrs.  Hugh  Miller,  in  a  way  which  com- 
manded my  entire  approval,  and  which  will,  I  have 
no  doubt,  give  satisfaction  to  the  public. 

Should  the  present  volume  meet  the  reception  which, 
in  my  humble  opinion,  it  deserves,  its  issue  can  be  fol- 
lowed up  by  that  of  others  of  closely  corresponding 
character  and  value. 

PETER  BAYNE. 


CONTENTS. 


HISTOEIGAL  AND  BIOGRAPHICAL. 
L 

FA01S 

Thb  Nxw  Ybab 13 

II. 
BoTAi.  Proobesseb,  Reoebt  AITD  SUfOTB        ......  10 

m. 

Thb  InrABT  Pbincb 80 

IV. 

Bbkaihb  or  Nafolzoit 8A 

V. 
Jbak  D'Aobk 87 

VI. 

Thb  Cbomwbll  Cohtboybbst 42 

VIL 

Thb  Thibd  Fbenos  Beyolutiok 62 

Via 

Thb  DirK.B  or  WELLnroroa 60 

IX. 

£abl  Gbbt 70 

Lord  Jeffret 78 

XL 

Fnui  at  T'zb  Towxb  o*  Loksojt 88 


X  CONTENTS. 

XIL 

The  Centenary  of  "  The  Forty-Five  ".......        04 

xin. 

The  Half-Century         ...........108 

XIV. 

The  Echoes  of  the  World .....IIO 

XV. 

Glen  Tilt  Tabooed 121 

XVI. 
Edinburoh  an  Age  Aqo •      .      .      «      •      188 

xvn. 

The  Bubns  Festival  and  Hero  Worship 144 


POLITICAL  AND  SOCIAL. 

L 

Oim  WoRKiNo  Classes •      •      .      .      .      1S4 

n. 

pEASAinr  Phofekties •      .      .      .      160 

m. 

The  Franchise •••••..163 

IV. 

A  Five-Pound  Qualifioatioh 176 

V. 
The  Steiexs      .« 188 

71 

The  CoTTAaxs  OT  oim  Hisds 197 

vn. 

Tbs  Botht  Ststbv 210 


CONTENTS.  XI 

vin. 

rAoa 
Thb  Hi»Hi<Ain>s 213 

IX. 
The  Scotch  Fooe-Law ,.227 

X. 

Paufeeibu *       240 

XL 

Paufeb  Labob 245 

xn. 

Thk  Cbime-Makutq  Laws 262 

xni. 

Is  Gaue  Fbofebtt? 262 

•  XIV. 

Tbb  Feloits  or  thb  Cochtbt «      .      278 

XV. 

Tbb  Legislative  Coubt 282 

XVL 

The  Fkace  Meetinqs 293 

xvn. 

^.tTEEATUBE  OP  THB  FeOPLE 300 


LITERARY  AND  SCIENTIFIO. 
I. 

^AnTI^-0  IMFKESSIONS  07  THE  Gbbat  EZHIBmOH 809 

IL 

CBITICISK  70B  THB  UlOiaTIATEO  ........         827 

m. 

Geolooy  versus  Asteokomy 870 


XII  CONTENTS. 

IV. 

uMm 

The  Spaces  Ain>  the  Febiods •      •      S8ff 

V. 

Unity  oir  the  Hcuait  Baces 89i 

VL 

KOKWAT  AHID  ITS  GLACIEBS  .......*.  .404 

vn. 

The  Amenities  ov  Litxsatube .      il2 

vm. 

A  Stbange  Stoby,  but  Tbub  .........   426 

IX. 

The  Idealistic  Schooi. •••.•488 

X. 

The  Poesy  of  Intellect  and  Fawoy       .......      448 

XI. 

Tbb  Untauoht  Poets •      •       •       .      467- 

XIL 

OuB  Novel  Litebatubb ..•      469 

xra. 

Eugene  Sub •*..       401 

XIV. 

The  Abbotstobd  Babobstot      ....*•••      fli 


ESSAYS. 


HISTOEICAL  AND  BIOGRAPHICAL. 

I. 

THE  NEW  TEAR. 

Eek  our  sheet  shall  have  passed  from  the  press  into  the~) 
hands  of  our  readers,  we  shall  have  entered  on  a  new 
year.  It  is  barely  ninety  degrees  distant  from  us  at  the 
present  moment.  It  landed  on  the  eastern  extremity  of 
Asia  as  the  1st  of  January,  1845,  just  as  we  were  rising 
from  our  breakfasts  in  Edinburgh,  on  the  31st  of  December, 
1844;  and  it  has  been  gliding  westwards  towards  us,  in 
the  character  of  one  o'clock  in  the  morning^  ever  since. 
In  a  few  hours  more  it  will  be  striding  across  the  back- 
woods of  America,  in  its  seven-league  boots,  and  careering 
over  the  Pacific  in  its  canoe.  And  then,  at  some  unde- 
finable  point,  not  yet  fixed  by  the  philosopher,  it  will  find 
itself  transformed  from  the  first  into  the  second  day  of  the 
year ;  and  thus  it  will  continue  to  roll  on,  round  and  round 
like  an  Archimedes  screw,  picking  up  at  every  gyration 
an  additional  unit,  until  the  three  hundred  and  sixty-five 
shall  be  comi^lete.  l    ' 

The  past  year  has  witnessed  many  curious  changes,  as  a 

dweller  in  time ;  the  coming  year  has  already  looked  down 

on  many  a  curious  scene,  as  a  journeyer  over  space.    It 

has  seen  Cochin-China,  with  all  its  unmapped  islands,  and 
2 


14  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGKAPHICAL. 

the  ancient  empire  of  Japan,  with  its  cities  and  provinces 
unknown  to  Europe.  It  has  heard  the  roar  of  a  busy 
population  amid  the  thousand  sti*eets  of  Pekin,  and  the 
wild  dash  of  the  midnight  tides  as  they  fi-et  the  rocks  of 
the  Indian  Archipelago.  It  has  been  already  with  our 
friends  in  Hindostau ;  it  has  been  greeted,  we  doubt  not 
with  the  voice  of  prayer,  as  the  slow  iron  hand  of  the  city- 
clock  indicated  its  arrival  to  the  missionaries  at  Madras ; 
it  has  swept  over  the  fever  jungles  of  the  Ganges,  where 
the  scaled  crocodile  startles  the  thirsty  tiger  as  he  stoops 
to  drink,  and  the  exposed  corpse  of  the  benighted  Hindoo 
floats  drearily  past.  It  has  travelled  over  the  land  of  pa- 
godas, and  is  now  entering  on  the  land  of  mosques.  Anon 
it  will  see  the  moon  in  her  wane,  casting  the  dark  shadows 
of  columned  Palmyra  over  the  sands  of  the  desert,  and 
the  dim  walls  of  Jerusalem,  looking  out  on  a  silent  and 
solitary  land  that  has  cast  forth  its  interim  tenants,  and 
waits  unappropriated  for  the  old  predestined  race,  its 
proper  inhabitants.  In  two  short  hours  it  will  be  voyag- 
ing along  the  cheerful  Mediterranean,  greeting  the  rower 
in  his  galley  among  the  isles  of  Greece,  and  the  seaman  in 
his  barque  embayed  in  the  Adriatic.  And  then,  after 
marking  the  red  glare  of  JStna  reflected  in  the  waves  that 
slumber  around  the  moles  of  Syracuse,  —  after  glancing  on 
the  towers  of  the  Seven-hilled  City,  and  the  hoary  snows 
of  the  Alps,  —  after  speeding  over  France,  over  Flanders, 
over  the  waves  of  the  German  Sea,  it  will  be  with  our- 
selves ;  and  the  tall,  ghostly  tenements  of  Dun-Edin  will 
reecho  the  shouts  of  the  High  Street.  Away  and  away 
it  will  cross  the  broad  Atlantic,  and  visit  watchers  in 
their  beacon-towers  on  the  deep,  and  the  emigrant  in  his 
jg-hut  among  the  brown  woods  of  the  West ;  it  will  see 
.  he  fire  of  the  red  man  umbering  with  its  gleam  tall  trunks 
and  giant  branches  in  some  deep  glade  of  the  forest ;  and 
then  mark,  on  the  far  shores  of  the  Pacific,  the  i-ugged  bear 
stalking  sullenly  over  the  snow.  Away  and  away,  and  the 
rast  globe  shall  be  girdled  by  the  zone  of  the  new-born  year. 


THE  NEW  YEAR.  15 

Many  a  broad  plain  shall  it  have  traversed  that  is  still 
anbroken  from  the  waste,  —  many  a  moral  wilderness  on 
which  the  Sun  of  Righteousness  has  not  yet  ai'isen. 
Nearly  eighteen  and  a  half  centuries  shall  have  elapsed 
since  the  shepherds  first  heard  the  midnight  song  in 
Bethlehem,  —  "  Glory  to  God  in  the  highest,  peace  on 
earth,  good-will  to  the  children  of  men."  And  yet  the 
coming  year  shall  pass,  in  its  first  visit,  over  prisons,  and 
gibbets,  and  penal  settlements,  and  battle-fields  on  which 
tLe  festering  dead  moulder  unburied  ;  it  will  see  the 
shotted  gun  and  the  spear  and  the  crease  and  the  mur- 
dering tomahawk,  slaves  in  their  huts,  and  captives  in 
their  dungeons.  It  will  look  down  on  uncouth  idols  in 
their  temples  ;  worshippers  of  the  false  prophet  in  their 
mosques ;  the  Papist  in  his  confessional ;  the  Puseyite  in 
his  stone  allegory ;  and  on  much  idle  and  bitter  controversy 
among  those  holders  of  the  true  faith  whose  proper  work 
is  the  conversion  of  the  world.  But  the  years  shall  pass, 
and  a  change  shall  come :  the  sacrifice  on  Calvary  was 
not  ofiered  up  in  vain,  nor  in  vain  hath  the  adorable  Saviour 
conquered,  and  ascended  to  reign  as  King  and  Lord  over 
the  nations.  The  kingdoms  shall  become  his  kingdoms, 
the  people  his  people.  The  morning  rises  slowly  and  in 
clouds,  but  the  dawn  has  broken  ;  and  it  shall  shine  forth 
more  and  more,  until  the  twilight  shadows  shall  have 
dispersed  and  the  sulphurous  fogs  shall  have  dissipated, 
and  all  shall  be  peace  and  gladness  amid  the  blaze  of  the 
perfect  day. 


16  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 


II. 

BOTAL  PROGRESSES. 

A  BANQUET-HALL  gay  With  lights  and  crowded  with 
revellers,  and  the  same  banquet-hall  lying  silent  in  the 
dim  gray  of  morning,  the  lights  all  extinguished,  and  the 
revellers  all  gone,  —  such  is  the  contrast  which  the  Edin- 
burgh of  the  present  week  presents  to  the  Edinburgh  of 
the  last.  The  living  tide  is  receding  even  more  suddenly 
than  it  arose,  —  ebbing  by  its  hundred  outlets,  —  roads, 
canals,  railways,  and  the  sea ;  and  already  do  our  streets, 
in  both  the  ancient  and  modern  portions  of  the  city,  pre- 
sent the  characteristic  aspect  of  the  season.  In  the  older 
thoroughfai'es,  long  appropriated  to  trade  and  labor,  the 
current  flows  languidly,  save  at  the  hours  when  warehouses 
and  workshops  pour  out  their  numerous  inmates.  In  the 
more  fashionable  streets  and  squares  it  has  altogether 
ceased  to  flow ;  and  as  solitude  ever  seems  deeper  amid 
sunshiny  lines  of  deserted  buildings  than  among  even 
rocks  and  woods,  however  lonely,  in  no  parts  of  the  city 
or  its  neighborhood  have  the  late  scenes  of  noisy  bustle 
and  excitement  been  followed  by  scenes  of  more  striking 
contrast  than  amid  the  more  splendid  streets  of  the  New 
Town,  with  their  few  unemployed  chairmen  here  and  there 
sauntering  about  corners,  or  their  single  domestics  here 
and  there  tripping  leisurely  along  the  pavement.  Parade 
and  pageantry  seem  over  for  the  time  ;  and  the  royal  visit 
to  Edinburgh  has  taken  its  place  among  other  royal  pro- 
gresses of  the  past,  as  a  thing  of  history,  —  as  an  event  to 
which  future  chroniclers  will  refer,  agreeably  to  their 
character  as  writers,  either  as  a  trivial  fact,  deserving  of 
but  its  single  brief  sentence,  or  as  interesting  incident, 


ROYAL  PROGRESSES,   RECENT  AND   REMOTE.  17 

suited,  from  its  picturesque  accompaniments,  to  relieve 
the  dry  narrative  of  contemporary  occurrences. 

Viewed  in  connection  with  the  character  of  the  respect- 
ive ages  to  which  they  belong,  these  progresses  form  no 
uninteresting  passages  in  our  annals.  We  find  them  pecu- 
liarly impressed  by  the  stamp  of  their  time,  and  linked  in 
most  instances  with  the  main  events  and  more  striking 
traits  of  the  national  history.  We  see  a  series  of  them 
rising  in  succession  before  us  even  now,  like  a  series  of 
pictures  in  a  show-box.  Shall  we  not  just  once  or  twice 
pull  the  string,  and  exhibit  some  of  at  least  their  more 
prominent  features  to  our  readers  ? 

A  youthful  monarch  wends  his  way  northwards  through 
a  wild,  trackless  country,  surrounded  by  a  band  of  cowled 
and  shaven  monks.  His  lay  attendants  have  doffed  the 
gay  attire  of  the  court  for  dingy  black  or  sober  gray,  — 
for  the  stole  of  coarse  serge  and  the  shirt  of  hair.  The 
monarch  himself  is  meanly  wrapped  in  robes  of  the  order  of 
St.  Francis,  bound  with  a  girdle  of  rope,  and  with  a  huge 
belt  of  hammei'ed  iron  pressing  uneasily  on  his  loins.  In 
that  lugubrious  assemblage  all  is  assumed  heaviness  and 
well-simulated  sorrow  :  not  a  trace  of  the  splendor  of  roy- 
alty is  visible.  For  the  gratulatory  shout,  or  the  joyous 
burst  of  music,  we  hear  only  the  sound  of  the  whip  plied 
in  self-inflicted  flagellation,  or  the  chant  of  the  penitential 
psalm.  To  what  very  distant  age  can  this  royal  progress 
belong  ?  Surely  to  the  dark  obscure  of  history,  —  to 
some  uncertain  era,  at  least  a  thousand  years  back.  Not 
at  all ;  not  further  back  than  one  third  of  that  period. 
That  becowled  and  begirdled  bigot  is  the  grandfather  of 
the  royal  lady  whose  progress  we  witnessed  on  Saturday 
last,  —  her  grandfather  Jms^  ten  times  removed.  We  see 
James  IV.  passing  on  his  pilgrimage  to  the  shrine  of  St. 
Dothus,  to  do  idle  penance,  in  the  far  wilds  of  Ross,  for 
the  unnatural  part  taken  by  him,  in  well-nigh  his  child- 
hood, against  his  unfortunate  father  at  Bannockburn.  Nor 
are  the  effects  of  the  deplorable  superstition  which  has 
2* 


18  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

stamp  ed  its  impress  on  that  mean  pageant  less  palpably 
evident  in  the  uncultivated  wildness  of  the  surrounding 
country,  or  in  the  servile  condition  and  savage  ignorance 
of  the  inhabitants,  than  in  the  royal  progress  itself. 
Wherever  superstition  wakes,  intellect  and  industry  slum- 
ber. Popery,  wherever  it  obtains,  overlays  the  national 
mind  like  a  nightmare ;  not  only  inducing  sleep,  but  also 
rendering  hideous  the  sleep  which  it  induces.  And  what 
is  the  nature  of  the  morality  which  grows  up  under  its 
fostering  infliiences  ?  Look  on  that  pageant.  Could  the 
repentance  which  bemoans  itself  in  the  confessional,  and 
then  expends  itself  in  sore  jDenances  and  long  journeys, 
be  in  any  instance  more  sincere  ?  The  haircloth,  the  whip, 
the  iron  belt,  the  shoeless  foot,  the  weary  pilgrimage,  — 
these  are  all  realities.  In  a  few  brief  days,  however,  the 
season  of  penance  will  be  over,  and  that  devoted  prince, 
laying  down  his  repentance  with  his  cowl,  shall  have  en- 
gaged, undisturbed  by  a  single  compunctious  qualm,  in  all 
the  grosser  debaucheries  of  an  immoral  and  semi-barba- 
rous court.  And  such  is  invariably  the  sort  of  connection 
which  exists  between  the  religion  of  penances,  pilgrimages, 
.and  masses,  and  purity  of  life  and  conduct. 

The  scene  changes,  and  a  lady,  as  now,  has  become  the 
centre  of  the  pageant.  The  rank  dew  lies  heavy  on  grass 
and  stone ;  a  deep  gloom  hangs  over  the  landscape,  —  a 
thick,  unwholesome  fog,  unstirred  by  the  wind ;  but  we 
can  see  the  huge  back  of  Arthur  Seat  faint  and  gray  amid 
the  haze,  with  the  unaltered  outline  of  the  crags  below ; 
and  yonder  are  the  two  western  towers  of  Holyrood,  and 
yonder  the  Abbey,  with  its  stone  roof  entire,  and  the 
hoar  damps  settling  on  its  painted  glass.  The  scene  is 
that  of  the  pageant  of  Saturday  last,  in  all  its  more  prom- 
inent features:  nought  has  changed,  save  man  and  his 
puny  labors.  Natui-e  seems  to  have  no  sympathy  with  the 
general  joy.  The  sun  has  not  shone  for  five  days,  nor 
the  moon  for  five  nights ;  the  boom  of  the  cannon  from 
the  distant  harbor,  where  the  French  galleys  lie,  falls  dead 


ROYAL  PROGKESSES,   RECENT   AND   REMOTE.  19 

and  heavy  on  the  ear,   like   the   echoes  of  a   sepulchral 
vault;  the  mingled  shouts  and  music  from  the  half-seen 
crowds  sound  drearily  amid  the  chill  and  dripping  damps, 
like  tones  of  the  winter  wind  in  a  ruin  at  midnight ;  and 
yonder  comes  the  pageant  of  the  day,  enwrapped  in  fog, 
like  a  drifting  vessel  half-enveloped  in  the  spray  of  a  lee- 
shore.    Mark  these  gay  and  volatile   strangers,  the  elite 
of  the  French  Court.    Yonder  are  the  three  Maries,  and 
yonder  the  two  Guises;  and  here  comes  the  Queen  herself, 
encircled  by  her  iron  barons.     And  who  is  that  Queen? 
Mary,  —  the  gay,  the  fascinating,  the  exquisitely  beautiful, 
—  a  true  sovereign  of  the  imagination,  —  a  choice  heroine 
of  poetry   and    romance,  —  a   woman    whose   loveliness 
still  exerts  its  influence  over  hearts,  —  a  monarch  whose 
misfortunes   and  sorrows   still  command  tears  ;   Mary,  — 
the  loose,  the  voluptuous,  the  unprincipled,  —  alike  fitted 
to  enchant  a  lover  or  to  destroy  a  husband,  —  the  victim 
of  her  own  unregulated  passions,  —  the  canonized  martyr 
of  Popery,  —  in  no  degree  less  surely  the  martyr  of  aXlul- 
tery  and    murder.      But  none  of  the   darker  traits   yet 
appear;  and  with  all  the  enthusiasm  of  the  national  char- 
acter, the  Scotch  welcome  their  Queen.     And  yet  motto 
and  device  speak  to  her  in  a  strange  language  as  she  passes 
on  :   the  very  signs  that  indicate  the  general  joy  at  her 
arrival  are  fraught  with  unpalatable  truth.      Nor  will  she 
be  left  to  guess  merely  at  their  meaning  when,  after  matins 
shall  be   sung  and  the  Host  elevated  in  yonder   chapel, 
the  echoes  of  that  ancient  High  Church  —  a  building  so 
peculiarly  associated  with  all  that  is  truly  great  in  Scottish 
history — shall  be  awakened   by  the  stormy  indignation 
of  Knox  ;   nay,  in    the  very  presence-chamber  shall  the 
sovereign   be  told  that  her  reformed   people  have  deter- 
mined to  brook  no  revival  of  the  blood-stained  idolatry 
of  Rome.      Mary's  grandfather  rode  unquestioned  on  his 
pilgrimage,  to  mumble  unprofitable  prayers  over  the  bones 
of  dead  men,  to  2:)rostrate  himself  before  stone  saints,  and 
to  worship  flour  wafers.     And  yet,  though  thus  blind  and 


20  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

ignorant  himself,  he  possessed  a  power  of  controlling  and 
prescribing  the  beliefs  of  his  subjects.  But  a  principle 
of  tremendous  energy  has  arisen  among  the  masses,  — 
a  principle  destined  to  convulse  empires  and  overthrow 
dynasties, —  to  curb  the  tyranny  of  rulers,  and  to  spread 
wide  among  the  people  the  blessings  of  freedom  and  the 
light  of  civilization.  Kings  are  no  longer  to  prescribe  the 
beliefs  of  their  subjects ;  subjects,  on  the  contrary,  are 
virtually  to  prescribe  the  beliefs  of  their  kings.  Monarchs 
are  to  profess  the  religion  of  their  people,  or  to  resign 
their  thrones.  Is  the  doctrine  challenged?  Mary  might 
well  challenge  it ;  nor  was  she  left  long  without  the  op- 
portunity. It  darkened  her  brief  reign,  and  rendered  the 
gloom  of  that  dreary  procession  exactly  what  a  few  mel- 
ancholy spirits  had  deemed  it,  —  a  gloom  too  significantly 
ominous  of  the  long  troubles  which  followed.  It  convulsed 
the  country  for  more  than  a  century,  reddening  many  a 
battle-field,  and  staining  many  a  scaffold,  from  the  scaffold 
of  the  infatuated  monarch  who  died  at  Whitehall,  to  that 
of  our  noble  covenanting  peasants  and  mechanics  who 
suffered  scarce  two  hundred  yards  from  where  we  write, 
and  whose  honored  bones  moulder  in  the  neighboring 
churchyard.  But  whatever  it  might  be  in  Mary's  days,  it 
is  surely  no  disputable  doctrine  now.  It  is  the  doctrine 
of  the  "Protestant  Succession,"  of  the  "  Coronation  Oath," 
of  the  "  Revolution  Settlement."  Except  for  this  doctrine, 
the  royal  personage  whose  progress  through  the  city  on 
Saturday  drew  together  so  vast  an  assemblage,  would  not 
now  be  the  Queen  of  Great  Britain.  She  could  have 
come  among  us  merely  as  a  highborn,  but  not  the  less 
obscure,  Continental  lady,  who^  were  she  to  be  pointed 
out  to  some  curious  spectator,  could  only  be  pointed  out 
as  the  niece  of  a  German  prince. 

The  progress  of  James  to  the  borders,  to  hold  justice 
coui-ts  at  the  head  of  an  army,  sufficiently  indicated  the 
wild  and  unsettled  character  of  the  age.  It  was  an  age  in 
which  all  power,  judicial  or  monarchial,  existed  in  its  first 


ROYAL  PROGREb.^ES,  RECENT  AND  REMOTE.      21 

elements;  the  authority  of  the  judge,  though  a  king,  waa 
nothing  apart  from  the  terrors  of  the  military.  Nor  were 
the  scenes  of  sudden  execution  which  followed  —  scenes 
the  recollection  of  which  still  survives  in  song  and  ballad 
—  in  any  degree  less  characteristic.  Even  justice  itself 
infected  by  the  savageism  of  the  period,  seems  to  have 
existed  as  but  a  stern  principle  of  violence  and  revenge. 
The  progress  of  Mary  to  the  north  bears  a  similar  impress. 
It  seems  pregnant  with  the  character  of  the  age.  We  see 
the  royal  escort  dogged  in  its  course  by  the  retainers  of  a 
turbulent  and  ambitious  noble ;  scarce  a  dell  without  its 
ambuscade,  —  scarce  a  hill-top  without  its  hostile  horde  of 
observation  and  annoyance ;  royal  fortresses  shut  against 
royalty,  until  reduced  by  siege ;  chiefs  and  their  septs 
hastily  arming  either  to  assail  or  to  defend  the  sovereign ; 
and  the  whole  terminating  in  a  hard-contested  and  bloody 
conflict,  execution,  confiscation,  and  exile.  There  is  scarce 
a  prominent  trait  in  the  old  character  and  condition  of  the 
country,  or  scarce  an  influential  event  in  its  history,  which 
some  one  of  the  royal  progresses  does  not  serve  to  illus- 
trate. 

There  were  none  of  them  more  characteristic,  however, 
than  the  progress  of  Charles  I.,  when  he  visited  Scotland 
in  1633,  to  "reduce  the  kirk  to  conformity."  James  IV". 
brought  his  shavelings  with  him  to  the  far  north,  to  patter 
masses  and  chant  matins.  Charles  brought  with  him  a 
much  more  dangerous  man  than  all  the  shavelings  of  James 
united.  He  brought  with  him,  —  the  Pusey,  the  Newman, 
the  Archdeacon  Wilberforce  of  those  days,  —  he  brought 
with  him  Archbishop  Land.  Rarely  in  Edinburgh  has 
there  been  a  more  profuse  or  tasteful  display  of  all  the 
various  symbols  by  which  the  public  indicate  cordial  joy 
and  welcome,  than  on  the  evening  of  Friday.  There  was 
the  rich  flrework,  the  brilliant  device  visible  by  its  own 
tinted  light,  the  motto,  the  bonfire,  the  blaze  of  torches, 
lamps,  and  tapers.  The  age  of  Charles,  however,  was, 
much  more  than  the  present,  an  age  of  mysteries  and  em- 


22  niSTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

bleras;  it  was  tlie  age  of  the  masque  and  the  allegory,— 
an  age  in  which  even  a  Bacon  could  write  of  such  things, 
and  a  Quarles  of  scarce  anything  else ;  and  we  question 
whether  Edinburgh  was  not  as  interestino;  a  sischt  when 
Charles  visited  it  rather  more  than  two  hundred  years  ago, 
as  when  Victoria  visited  it  last  week.  "The  streets  on 
both  sides,"  says  Stevenson,  "  were  lined  by  the  citizens  in 
their  best  apparel  and  arms,  from  the  West  Port  to  Holy- 
rood."  At  one  "  theatre,  exquisitely  adorned,"  where  the 
Lord  Provost  presented  the  keys  to  his  Majesty,  there  was 
a  "painted  description  of  the  city."  At  another,  near  the 
Luckenbooths,  wei-c  arranged  the  portraits  of  all  the  kings 
of  Scotland,  from  Fergus  downward.  A  fountain  at  the 
cross  ran  with  wine  for  the  benefit  of  the  lieges ;  and 
Bacchus,  large  as  life,  superintended  the  distribution  of  the 
liquor.  The  Muses  made  themselves  visible  in  Hunter 
Square  ;  the  heavenly  bodies  danced  harmoniously  at  the 
Netherbow.  Bells  chimed,  cannons  rattled,  and  "  all  sorts 
of  music  that  could  be  invented  "  mingled  their  tones  with 
the  booming  of  the  guns,  the  pealing  of  the  bells,  the  mel- 
ody of  the  planets,  the  speeches  of  Fergus,  Bacchus,  and 
the  Provost,  and  the  songs  of  Apollo,  the  Burghers,  and  the 
Muses.  We  are  further  told  that  the  streets  were  actually 
"  sanded,"  and  that  the  "  chief  places  were  set  out  with 
stately  triumphal  arches,  obelisks,  pictures,  artificial  moun- 
tains, and  other  costly  shows."  It  must  have  been  alto- 
gether a  bizarre  scene.  Parnassus,  with  all  its  rocks,  trees, 
and  fountains,  leaned  against  the  old  weigh-house.  When 
the  Muses  sung,  the  nymphs  of  the  Cowgate  joined  in  the 
chorus  ;  the  genius  of  Scotland  discoursed  of  war  and 
conquest  in  the  middle  of  the  West  Bow ;  classic  arches 
of  lath  strided  over  the  odoriferous  Cranes ;  festoons  of 
flowers  hung  romantically  above  the  unsullied  waters  of 
the  Nor'-Loch  ;  obelisks  of  pasteboard  shot  up  their  taper 
pinnacles  among  the  gray  chimneys  of  the  Grassmarket ; 
—  the  entire  city  must  have  not  a  little  resembled  its 
defunct  patron  saipt  of  blackened  wood,  "  old  St.  Gyle," 


KOYAL   PROGRESSES,   RECENT   AND   REMOTE.  2(5 

when  bedizzened  on  <i  holiday  with  colored  glass,  tinsel; 
and  cut  paper.  And  then,  the  handsome,  imperious,  mel- 
ancholy Charles,  with  violent  death  impressed,  according 
to  the  belief  of  ihe  age,  in  the  very  lines  of  his  countenance, 
and  the  withered,  diminutive  Laud,  perplexed  by  some 
half-restored  recollection  of  his  last  night's  dream,  or  bent 
to  the  full  stretch  of  his  faculties  in  originating  some  new 
religious  form  suggested  by- the  surrounding  mummeries, 
or  in  determining  whether  his  cope  might  not  possibly  be 
improved  by  the  addition  of  a  few  spangles,  must  have 
looked  tolerably  picturesque  as  they  passed  along  the  lines 
of  the  grave,  whiskered  burghers  stretching  on  either  hand, 
surmounted  by  all  the  beauty  of  the  place,  as  it  hung  gaping 
and  curious  from  the  windows  above.  On  Sunday,  Charles, 
unlike  our  present  monarch,  attended  the  High  Church. 
We  fain  trust  the  presence  of  the  one  and  the  absence  of 
the  other  did  not  indicate  the  same  thing.  "  The  ordi- 
nary reader  began  to  sing,  as  usual,"  says  the  historian ; 
"  whereat  his  Majesty,  displeased,  despatched  the  Bishop 
of  Ross  to  turn  him  out.  And  the  bishop  straightway  did 
so,  with  no  few  menaces,  and  introduced  into  his  place 
two  English  choristers  in  their  vestments,  who,  with  the 
help  of  the  dignitaries,  performed  their  service  after  the 
English  manner."  "  That  being  ended,"  adds  the  historian, 
"Bishop  Guthrie  of  Moray  went  up  to  the  pulpit  to  preach  ; 
but,  instead  of  making  divine  truth  his  theme,  he  had 
little  else  than  some  flattering  panegyrics,  which  made  the 
king  to  blush,  mingled  with  bitter  scoffs  at  those  who 
scrupled  the  use  of  the  vestments."  Poor,  hapless  king  I 
With  so  many  flatterers  and  so  few  friends,  with  the 
Bishop  of  Ross  for  his  very  humble  servant,  the  Bishop  of 
Moray  for  his  chaplain,  and  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 
for  his  adviser,  was  it  a  wonder  he  should  have  lost  his 
head  ?  The  storm  broke  out  only  four  years  after,  —  broke 
out  in  that  very  High  Church,  —  which  overturned  both 
throne  and  altar. 

Surely,  a  curious  subject  of  reflection  I     The   reigning 


24  HISTOlirCAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

monarch  derives  her  lineage,  not  from  Charles,  but  from 
the  sister  of  Charles.  The  legitimate  branch  was  lopped 
oif,  and  left  to  wither  and  die,  and  the  collateral  branch 
grafted  in.  Why?  What  could  have  led  to  an  event 
so  contrary  to  the  first  principles  of  the  law  of  succes- 
sion, as  embodied  in  statute  by  our  legislative  assem- 
blies, and  expounded  in  our  civil  courts  ?  A  question 
easily  answered.  The  germ  of  the  whole  transaction  might 
be  seen  in  the  royal  progress,  in  which  Laud  and  the  infat- 
uated Charles  passed  down  the  High  Street  together,  and 
in  the  scene  enacted  on  the  following  Sunday  in  the  High 
Church.  The  abdication  of  James  VII.  was  not  less  inti- 
mately connected  with  the  infection  communicated  by  the 
Archbishop,  than  the  troubles  and  death  of  James's  father. 
The  Laudisra  of  the  one  terminated  in  the  Popery  of  the 
other.  No  one  thinks  it  at  all  strange  that  the  Puseyism 
of  a  Sibthorp  or  a  Miss  Gladstone  should  land  them  full  in 
the  Romish  Church.  A  hundred  other  such  conversions 
of  the  present  day  from  Puseyism  to  Popery  show  us  that 
such  is  the  natural  tendency  of  the  rivived  doctrines ;  they 
constitute  no  resting-place ;  they  form  merely  a  passage  from 
one  state  of  mind  to  another,  —  a  sort  of  inclined  plane, 
by  which  reluctant  Protestantism  scales  inch  by  inch  the 
transcendental  heights  of  Popery.  It  was  exactly  a  similar 
process  that  produced  one  of  the  most  remarkable  revolu- 
tions recorded  in  history.  Two  princes,  educated  in  the 
transition  beliefs  of  the  king,  their  father,  followed  up 
these  to  their  legitimate  consequences,  and  so  died  mem- 
bers of  the  infallible  Church.  They  did  exactly  what  Sib- 
thorp and  Miss  Gladstone  have  done.  The  one,  a  careless 
debauchee,  declined  sacrificing  anything  for  the  sake  of  a 
creed  loosely  held  by  him  at  best,  and  which,  in  his  gayer 
moods,  he  occasionally  abandoned  for  the  indifferency  of 
infidelity ;  the  other,  an  honest  bigot,  acted  up  to  his 
adoptee^  beliefs,  and  so  forfeited  the  crown.  And  hence 
the  claim  and  standing  of  the  high-born  lady  who  now  oc- 
cupies the  supreme  place  in  the  government  of  the  country. 


ROYAL  PROGRESSES,  RECENT  AND  REMOTE.  ?5 

Can  there  be  a  more  legitimate  object  of  solicitude  to  all 
in  a  time  like  the  present,  —  to  all,  at  least,  who  are  at 
once  loyal  subjects  and  true  Protestants,  —  than  her  pres- 
ervation from  the  dangerous  contagion  of  the  transition 
beliefs  and  doctrines,  and  from  that  perilous  process  of 
change  which  produced  of  old  so  great  a  national  revolu- 
tion, and  which  is  so  palpably  operative  in  the  apostasies 
of  the  present  day?  If,  as  indicated  by  the  course  of 
events,  popery  be  fast  rising  by  the  deceitful  slope  which 
Puseyisra  supplies,  and  rising,  as  prophecy  so  clearly  inti- 
mates, only  to  fall  for  ever,  it  were  well,  surely,  that  the 
daughter  of  our  ancient  kings  should  be  on  her  guard 
against  its  insidious  approaches.  It  involved  princes  of 
her  blood  in  its  former  fall ;  nor  is  it  a  thing  impossible 
that,  misled  by  the  counsel  of  other  Lauds,  other  princes 
may  share  in  its  final  ruin.    But  we  digress. 

There  is  little  of  an  intrinsically  pleasing  character  in 
the  visit  of  George  IV.,  and  not  much  in  it  partictilarly 
characteristic,  except  perhaps  of  the  monarch  himself.  It 
was  much  a  matter  of  show, —  a  masque  on  a  large  scale. 
There  was  little  that  was  real  in  it,  save  the  enthusiasm  of 
the  people.  It  was,  however,  a  masque  enacted  under  the 
superintendence  of  a  great  genius,  —  the  first  scene-painter 
in  the  world,  —  not  very  worthily  employed,  perhaps,  in 
designing  mere  tableaux  vivans,  as  on  this  occasion,  but  not 
without  an  apology  of  Bacon  when  he  wrote  of  "  Masques 
and  Triumphs."  "  These  things  are  but  toys,"  said  the  phi- 
losopher ;  "  but  yet,  since  princes  will  have  such  things,  it 
is  better  they  should  be  graced  with  elegance  than  daubed 
with  cost."  What  was  chiefly  remarkable  in  the  visit  of 
George  was  the  tact  with  which  the  monarch  avoided  every 
occasion  of  ofience,  and  how,  trading  on  so  very  slender  a 
stock  of  real  worth  as  that  which  he  possessed,  and  in  the 
face  of  so  large  an  amount  of  adverse  feeling  as  that  which 
he  had  previously  excited,  he  should  have  contrived  to 
render  himself  popular  by  the  exercise  of  the  "  petty  mo- 
ralities" alone.  Never  did  the  "mere  gentleman,"  ab- 
3 


26  mSTOBICAL  AND  BIOGRAFHICAI.. 

stracted  from  tie  good,  great,  generous  qualities  of  our 
nature,  accomplish  more.  He  came  to  Edinburgh  only  two 
years  after  the  trial  of  Queen  Caroline,  and,  without  ex- 
hibiting anything  higher  than  the  urbanity  of  a  thoroughly 
well-bred  man,  he  taught  all  Scotland  to  foiget  for  the 
time  the  result  of  that  triaL  We  regret  that  Sir  Robert 
Peel  should  not  hare  availed  himself  of  the  advantages  of 
having  served  under  so  accomplished  a  master  in  the  art 
of  pleasing.  Gleorge  TV.  came  to  Edinburgh  under  every 
disadvantage,  and  regained  there  much  of  the  popularity 
which  he  had  previously  lost ;  Sir  Robert  came  to  Edin- 
burgh in  the  train  of  his  royal  mistress,  —  a  monarch  in 
whose  fiivor  the  partialities  of  the  nation  had  been  largely 
awakened ;  and  after  losing  well-nigh  all  that  remained  of 
his  own  popularity,  he  would  have  lost  for  her,  had  the 
thing  been  possible,  her  popularity  too. 

The  recent  royal  progress  through  Edinburgh  has  had 
its  many  striking  scenes ;  but  the  chronicler  who  may  have 
to  concentrate  himself  on  one  description  as  a  specimen  of 
the  whole,  would  do  well  to  select  the  scene  of  Saturday 
last,  as  exhibited  in  the  upper  part  of  the  High  Street, 
when  her  Majesty,  after  just  receiving  the  city  keys,  passed 
on  to  the  Castle.  As  a  pageant  the  thing  was  nothing ;  it 
had  the  disadvantage,  too,  which  the  Queen's  passage 
through  the  city  on  Thursday  morning  had  not,  of  being 
artifidait  —  a  projected  piece  of  parade,  with  but  the 
parade  itself  for  its  ostensible  object  The  Queen  rode 
along  the  streets  just  that  people  might  see  the  Queen. 
There  is  sublimity,  however,  in  the  appearance  of  vast 
multitudes  animated  by  some  overpowering  feeling ;  and 
we  know  not  that  crowds  could  be  better  disposed  for 
effect,  or  in  a  locality  richer  in  historic  recollection,  than 
along  the  High  Street  of  Edinburgh,  with  its  old  Parlia- 
ment Hall,  its  venerable  High  Church,  and  its  double  line 
Off  tall,  antique  houses,  some  of  which  must  have  cast  their 
shadows  over  the  pageant  of  Mary,  and  not  a  few  of  them 
over  the  pageant  of  Charles.    The  morning,  though  not 


aOTAL  PROGRESSES,  RECENT  AND   REMOTE.  27 

bright,  was  pleasant ;  the  rack  flew  high  over  head,  showing 
that  a  smart  breeze  blew  in  the  upper  regions,  but  all  was 
comparatively  calm  beneath,  Xow  and  then  an  occasional 
gleam  of  the  sun  lighted  up  the  tall  gray  fronts  on  the 
western  side,  or  played  among  the  fantastic  tracery  and 
lofty  pinnacles  of  St.  Giles ;  but  it  passed  as  suddenly  as 
it  flashed  out,  and  the  general  tone  was  a  subdued,  smoky 
gray,  A  dense  and  ever-increasing  crowd  occupied  the 
space  below ;  direct  through  the  middle  there  ran  a  narrow 
passage,  that  reminded  one  of  a  river,  with  steep,  erect 
banks,  winding  its  way  through  a  flat  alluvial  meadow. 
At  one  point  it  expanded  into  what  seemed  a  small  lake : 
'twas  where  the  city  magistracy  awaited  her  Majesty,  clad 
in  long  scarlet  cloaks  of  office ;  and  here  a  few  dragoons 
flitted  across  the  open  space,  or  paced  along  the  winding 
passage,  —  the  shallops  of  this  lake  and  river.  Every 
window  was  crowded,  story  on  story,  from  the  windows 
immediately  over  the  street  to  the  casements  of  the  attics 
eighty  feet  above  head.  Even  the  roofs  had  their  cluster- 
ing groups.  We  marked  a  few  ragged  boys  perilously 
grouped  round  a  chimney  full  ninety  feet  from  the  pave- 
ment ;  and  to  this  dizzy  eminence  the  urchins  had  con- 
trived to  bring  with  them  the  tattered  fragment  of  a  flag, 
which  ever  and  anon  they  waved  with  huge  glee.  The 
group  was  one  in  which  a  Hogarth  would  have  delighted. 
The  roof  of  St.  Giles's  seemed  scarce  less  densely  occupied 
than  the  street  below ;  and  the  efiect  of  the  whole  was 
striking  in  the  extreme.  Blair,  in  his  "  Grave,"  speaks  of 
"  overbellying  crowds."  The  spectators  of  the  scene  of 
Saturday  must  have  been  able  to  appreciate  the  picturesque- 
ness  of  the  phrase.  The  living  masses,  hanging  from  every 
corner  and  coigne  of  vantage,  seemed,  if  we  may  so  express 
ourselves,  to  project  the  antique  architecture  of  the  High 
Street  against  the  sky.  Almost  every  snugger  corner,  too, 
had  its  temporary  scafibld  or  balcony.  There  was  in  par- 
ticular one  scafibld  that  greatly  gratified  us;  the  object 
of  its  erection  showed  both  good  taste  and  good  feeling.    It 


28  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

had  been  raised  for  the  accommodation  of  the  boys  and  girls 
of  Heriot's ;  and  never  was  there  a  group  of  happier  faces 
than  that  which  it  exhibited.  Such  was  the  scene,  when, 
shortly  after  eleven,  a  solitary  horseman  came  spurring 
up  the  street,  and,  pausing  for  a  moment  in  the  centre  of 
the  open  space  where  the  magistracy  of  the  city  were 
assembled,  he  intimated  that  the  Queen  had  reached  Holy- 
rood.  The  whisper  passed  along  the  crowd,  and  was 
caught  from  balcony  to  window,  and  from  window  to  roof. 
The  bells  of  the  city  had  been  rung  at  intervals  from  morn- 
ing ;  they  now  broke  out  into  a  merry  peal ;  and  the  near 
boom  of  cannon  from  the  neighboring  Castle  suddenly 
awoke  the  echoes  of  the  High  Street.  There  was  a  move- 
ment in  the  close-wedged  crowds  beneath,  —  a  murmur 
expressive  of  the  general  excitement,  —  a  swaying  to  and 
fro  ;  and  then  for  a  space  all  was  still  as  before.  From  our 
point  of  observation  we  could  catch  a  view  of  the  roofs 
and  upper  stories  of  the  tenements  in  the  lower  part  of  the 
street,  with  their  dimly-seen  groups  of  spectators.  We 
could  mark  a  sudden  waving  of  handkerchiefs,  —  a  deep, 
though  distant  cheer;  a  cry  of  "The  Queen,  the  Queen," 
passed  along  the  crowd.  The  masses  opened  heavily  and 
slowly,  as  if  compressed  by  the  lateral  weight ;  a  train  of 
coaches  was  seen  advancing  :  there  was  the  gleam  of  hel- 
mets, the  flash  of  swords ;  the  shout  rose  high ;  and  as  the 
vehicle  in  front  moved  on,  there  was  a  fluttering  of  scarfs 
and  kerchiefs  at  every  casement  and  in  every  gallery,  as  if 
a  stiff  breeze  had  swept  by  and  shaken  them  as  it  passed. 
The  city  magistrates,  in  their  scarlet  robes,  had  formed 
a  group  in  front  of  the  Exchange ;  and  here  the  royal 
vehicle  paused,  and  the  Lord  Provost  went  through  the 
ceremony  of  delivering  the  city  keys  into  the  hands  of  the 
Bovereign.  We  sat  within  less  than  twenty  yards  of  her 
Majesty  at  the  time,  and  employed  ourselves  in  marking 
how  thoroughly  the  countenance  is  a  German  one,  —  how 
very  much  of  Brunswick  there  is  in  it,  and  how  Ifttle  of 
the  Stuarts.    It  bears  trace  of  the  Guelphs  iu  every  feature 


ROYAL  PROGRESSES,  RECENT  AND   REMOTE.  29 

and  lineament.  As  a  family  face,  it  has  its  historic  associ- 
ations speaking  of  Revolution  principles  and  Protestant 
succession.  The  pageant  moved  on,  and  disappeared  as, 
passing  from  where  the  street  terminates  in  front  of  the 
Castle,  it  entered  on  the  esplanade. 

Such  is  a  faint  and  imperfect  outline  of  the  one  promi- 
nently-striking scene  connected  with  the  recent  progress. 
We  have  said  that  the  progresses  of  James,  Mary,  and 
Charles  were  characteristically  impressed  by  the  stamp  of 
their  time,  and  linked  to  the  main  events  and  more  striking 
traits  of  the  national  history.  May  the  recent  progress  be 
regarded  as  also  characteristic  ?  Time  alone  can  show.  It 
may  be  found  to  speak  all  too  audibly  of  the  revived  super- 
stition to  which  the  troubles  of  Charles  were  mainly  owing, 
—  the  superstition  which  conducted  him  ultimately  to  the 
front  of  Whitehall,  and  his  younger  son  to  a  French  palace 
in  St.  Germains.  But  we  shall  meanwhile  hope  for  the  best, 
without,  however,  attempting  to  conceal  from  oui-selves 
that  one  cloud  more  seems  to  have  arisen  on  the  already 
darkened  horizon  of  the  Church  of  Scotland. 


30  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 


III. 

THE  INFANT  PRINCE. 

A  PRINCE  born  to  the  throne  of  Great  Britain !  The 
firing  of  cannon,  the  ringing  of  bells,  the  crackling  of  fire- 
works, the  blazing  of  bonfires,  lioliday  dresses  and  holiday 
faces  everywhere,  all  testify  to  the  general  joy. 

We  are  reminded  of  a  day  which  must  have  mingled 
with  the  first  recollections  of  even  the  most  aged  of  our 
readers,  and  which  men  in  the  prime  of  early  manhood  are 
quite  old  enough  to  remember  too,  —  that  happy  fourth  of 
June,  the  birthday  of  the  good  George  III.,  on  which,  for 
two  whole  generations,  and  a  little  longer,  there  used  to 
be  such  waving  of  flags  and  flashing  of  gunpowder,  and, 
notwithstanding  all  our  wars  abroad  and  all  our  difficulties 
and  troubles  at  home,  so  large  an  amount  of  hearty  national 
enjoyment.  Is  the  ninth  of  November  to  be  just  such 
another  day  to  the  generations  of  the  future  ?  Shall  flags 
be  flaunting  gaily  in  the  sun  to  welcome  the  birthday  of 
the  reigning  monarch,  —  the  child  of  our  Victoria,  —  at  a 
time  when  our  tombstones  shall  be  casting  their  shadows 
across  the  withered  November  sward  of  silent  churchyards; 
and  shall  bonfires  be  blazing  on  the  hills,  as  the  stars 
twinkle  out  one  by  one  from  amid  the  deepening  blue  to 
look  down  upon  our  graves  ? 

The  future  belongs  to  One  only, — to  that  adorable 
Being  who  has  made  His  great  goodness  so  manifest  to  our 
country  for  ages  and  centuries,  and  rarely  more  vividly 
manifest  than  in  the  present  happy  event.  He  alone  sees 
the  end  from  the  beginning,  and  He  more  than  sees  it ;  for 
in  Ilis  unchanging  righteousness,  and  infinite  goodness  and 
wisdom,  has  He  ordered  and  determined  it  all.     Our  his- 


THE   INFANT  PRINCE.  31 

tories  relate  to  but  the  past ;  in  His  the  chronicles  of  all 
the  future  are  also  recorded.  We  write  in  ours  as  their 
latest  event,  that  there  has  been  born  an  heir-apparent  to 
the  British  crown,  and  our  remoter  hills  still  reverberate 
the  echoes  which  our  gratulations  have  awakened  ;  in  His 
the  circumstances  of  the  birth  are  not  more  minutely  laid 
down  than  the  details  of  the  funeral.  There  is  a  coffin  in 
the  distance  that  lies  in  the  gloomy  solitude  of  a  royal 
vault;  and  the  golden  tablet  that  rests  on  the  lid  bears  a 
date  and  an  age  well  known  to  Him,  for  His  own  finger 
hath  inscribed  it.  To  us  all  is  dark ;  but  what  so  natural 
for  creatures  whose  birthright  is  hope,  whose  privilege  and 
whose  nature  it  is  to  look  both  before  and  behind,  to  dwell 
upon  the  past,  and  anticipate  a  hereafter !  What  so  nat- 
ural for  them  as  to  let  their  thoughts  out  upon  the  future, 
and  to  imagine  where  they  cannot  see  ! 

Our  children  are  around  us,  —  the  bright  eyes,  and 
silken  locks,  and  rosy  cheeks  of  infancy.  Is  there  no 
pleasure  in  saying  to  them.  Listen  to.  these  sounds,  —  to 
that  distant  peal  of  the  city  bells,  and  that  measured, 
sullen  boom  of  the  cannon  :  there  has  been  a  king  born 
who  is  to  be  your  king,  though,  we  can  trust,  not  ours,  for 
we  are  old  enough  to  remember  the  birth  of  the  Queen, 
his  mother.  But  he  is  to  be  your  king,  and  in  happier 
days,  we  would  fain  hope,  than  those  of  either  the  present 
or  the  past.  The  world  will  not  be  always  what  it  has 
been  ;  misery  will  not  be  for  ever  the  prevailing  state,  nor 
unhappiness  the  o'ermastering  feeling,  nor  evil  the  domi- 
nant power.  There  is  a  time  coming,  foretold  by  the  Spirit 
of  God,  when  wars,  and  violence,  and  crime,  and  misery, 
shall  cease,  —  when  men  shall  live  together  as  brethren, 
as  the  children  of  one  fomily,  — and  the  knowledge  of  the 
Lord  shall  be  everywhere.  That  time  cannot  now  be  far 
distant ;  and  if  good  and  wise  men  have  calculated 
aright,  —  studious  and  venerable  fathers  of  the  church, 
who,  in  poring  over  the  sacred  oracles,  have  arrived,  each 
apart,   at   conclusions   singularly  alike,  —  the   dawn  may 


32  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

break  with  no  doubtful  flush  of  promise  during  the  reign 
of  the  monarch  at  whose  birth  three  kingdoms  are  noAV 
gladdened ;  the  eastern  sky  may  be  reddened  by  the  first 
glories  of  that  millennial  light  which  shall  continue  to 
shine  more  and  more  till  the  perfect  day  shall  have  arisen ; 
and  even  he  himself,  made  wise  through  the  teaching  of 
the  Spirit,  may  be  one  of  those  nursing  fathere  of  the  church 
whose  happy  reigns  prophets  have  foretold.  Are  these  but 
the  wild  dreams  of  the  enthusiast?  We  may,  indeed,  err 
widely  in  attempting  to  fix  the  time,  but  be  it  remembered 
that  God  himself  has  fixed  the  events. 

It  were  little  wonder  tliough  men  should  weary  of  the 
present.  There  are,  we  doubt  not,  some  of  our  readers  who 
can  look  back  on  the  events  of  sixty  years.  How  has  the 
space  been  filled  ?  A  sullen  and  doubtful  peace  bad  just 
succeeded  the  disastrous  —  we  must  add  unjust — war  with 
our  American  brethren.  It  was  broken  by  the  fierce  and 
bloody  tumults  of  the  French  Revolution.  Atheism  and 
murder  stalked  abroad  ;  nation  rose  up  against  nation ; 
Europe  bristled  over  with  arms  ;  and  for  eighteen  years 
together,  during  which  millions  perished  by  famine,  fire,  and 
the  sword,  manslaying  was  the  trade  of  the  civilized  and 
Christian  world !  Men,  as  little  wise  as  their  rude  ances- 
tors, were  playing  at  the  old  vulgar  trick  of  hero-making, 
and  the  progress  of  the  species  stood  still  till  the  d'sas- 
trous  game  was  finished.  In  our  own  country,  times  of 
hardship  and  discontent  succeeded,  and  poor,  hunger-bit- 
ten men,  maddened  and  blinded  by  their  misery,  snatched 
hold  of  uncouth  weapons,  in  the  vain  hope  of  bettering 
their  condition  by  violence.  The  madness  passed,  and  a 
period  of  political  heats  and  animosities  ensued.  Civil 
right  was  regarded  as  but  another  name  for  national  hap- 
piness. The  delirium  of  this  second  fever  is  over  for  the 
time.  The  rights  have  been  gained ;  but  the  poor,  over- 
toiled man  who  wrought  sixteen  hours  every  day  ere  the 
struggle  began,  works  sixteen  hours  still,  and  hunger  and 
the  sense   of  hapless  degradation  presses  upon  him  aa 


THE  INFANT  PRINCE.  83 

sorely  as  ever.  The  present,  in  the  main,  is  assuredly 
no  happy  time.  Never  were  there  such  frightful  accu- 
mulations of  misery  in  our  cities,  and  rarely  have  the 
sullen  murmurs  of  the  masses  evinced  deeper  discontent. 
In  our  own  country  we  have  witnessed  the  revival  of  the 
evils  of  an  earlier  period,  —  superstition  stalking  abroad 
unquestioned ;  persecution  assailing  the  truth ;  the  spiritual 
nature,  the  eternal  concerns  of  man,  made  the  game  of 
quibbling  lawyers  impressed  by  no  true  sense  of  a  hereafter; 
consciences  outraged  ;  and  the  care  of  souls  transferred 
by  an  abuse  of  law  to  the  charge  of  wretched  hirelings. 
It  is  well  to  believe  there  are  better  times  in  store ;  that 
the  right  shall  eventually  prevail,  whatever  may  be  the 
fate  of  those  who  contend  for  it  in  the  present ;  that  Christ 
reigns ;  and  that  the  day  is  assuredly  coming,  though  it 
must  rise  on  the  tombs  of  the  present  generation,  when 
his  sovereignty  shall  be  universally  acknowledged,  and 
the  influences  of  his  Spirit  everywhere  felt. 


84  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 


IV. 

BEMAINS  OF  NAPOLEOK 

There  are  no  peoi3le  in  Europe  who  bear  a  better 
marked  character  than  the  French,  and  no  people  whose 
peculiar  tastes  and  dispositions  seem  to  have  been  so 
closely  studied  by  their  more  sagacious  statesman.  They 
are  employed  at  present,  heart  and  soul,  in  adding, -at  the 
suggestion  of  Thiers,  a  supplementary  paragraph  to  the 
posthumous  history  of  Napoleon.  The  wily  politician  has 
applied  to  our  English  Government  for  permission  to  re- 
move the  remains  of  the  great  hero  of  France  from  St. 
Helena  to  Paris ;  the  English  have  acceded  to  the  request 
with  the  best  possible  grace ;  and  the  French  people, 
brimful  of  sentiment  and  enthusiasm,  and  on  tiptoe  expec- 
tation of  the  coming  pageant,  are  lauding  Thiers  to  the 
skies  as  the  best  possible  of  all  good  ministers,  and  the 
English  as  the  most  generous  of  all  old  enemies,  made 
friends  for  evermore.  When  a  Roman  general  wished  to 
conciliate  the  people  of  Rome,  he  turned  loose  a  score  or 
two  of  wild  beasts  in  the  amphitheatre,  or  hired  a  few 
hundred  gladiators  to  fight  together  till  the  one-half  of 
them  were  dead.  One  general,  however,  was  content  just 
to  imitate  another  general ;  and  though  they  squandered 
their  bronze  and  silver  in  immense  sums,  there  was  no 
expense  of  invention.  Thiers  is  immensely  more  original : 
he  has  got  a  dead  Napoleon  for  the  French  to  bury,  and 
will  probably  command  majorities,  on  the  strength  of  their 
gratitude  and  respect,  for  a  twelvemonth  or  two  to  come. 
Even  the  classes  with  discernment  enough  to  see  through 
his  policy  will  admire  him  for  the  great  tact  and  ability 
which  it  displays,  —  and  there   is  perhaps  no  civilized 


REMAINS   OF  NAPOLEON.  35 

people  in  the  world  whom  the  mere  admiration  of  talent 
or  of  greatness  influences  more.  The  French  as  a  people 
are  followers  rather  of  great  men  than  of  great  principles. 
Nature  does  not  seem  to  have  intended  them  for  republi- 
cans; they  were  content  of  old  to  be  little  individually 
that  their  kings  might  be  great ;  and  in  after  days  they 
were  equally  content  to  lose  their  individuality  in  the 
glory  of  Napoleon.  But  is  it  not  well,  for  the  sake  of 
peace,  that  the  policy  of  Thiers  tells,  on  the  present  occa- 
sion, as  powerfully  in  favor  of  the  English  Government  as 
in  that  of  the  sagacious  politician  liimself  ? 

It  matters  little  whether  the  remains  of  Napoleon  lie  in 
a  gorgeous  sepulchre  amid  the  multitudes  of  Paris,  or 
raised  high  over  the  sea  on  a  lonely  rock  of  the  Atlantic, 
like  an  eagle  dead  in  his  eyry.  The  scourge  which  vexed 
the  nations  has  been  laid  by ;  the  purpose  of  mingled  wrath 
and  mercy  which  it  was  called  into  existence  to  accom- 
plish has  been  fully  performed.  The  last  lesson  taught 
regarding  it  was  to  show  how  utterly  passive  and  power- 
less a  thing  it  was  in  itself,  when  flung  aside  by  the  Om- 
nipotent Hand  which  had  wielded  it.  The  melancholy 
prisoner  of  the  rock,  —  the  fretful  invalid,  so  unhappy 
in  society,  and  yet  so  unfitted  for  solitude,  —  the  petty 
squabbler  with  ofiicials  and  underlings  about  forms  of 
etiquette  and  modes  of  address,  —  was  the  terrible  Napo- 
leon, the  hero  of  a  hundred  fields,  the  dispenser  of  crowns 
and  sceptres,  the  warrior  who  bad  borne  down  the  con- 
gregated soldiery  of  civilized  Europe,  the  conqueror  of 
powerful  kingdoms,  whom  the  united  might  of  a  Ctesar 
and  an  Alexander  might  have  assailed  in  vain.  Never  was 
there  greatness  so  great,  or  littleness  on  a  smaller  scale ; 
and  it  will  be  long  ere  the  people  of  France  find  for  his 
dust  so  sublime  and  appropriate  a  monument  as  the  huge 
rock  of  St.  Helena.  Its  dark  walls  of  a  thousand  yards, 
compared  with  which  the  walls  of  great  Babylon  were  as 
hillocks  raised  by  the  mole,  —  the  unceasing  surge  that  idly 
frets  itself  against  its  base,  —  the  vast  surrounding  sea, 


36  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

with  its  dim  and  distant  line,  —  the  sublime  o'erarching 
canopy,  —  the  minute  and  speck-like  tomb  rising  towards 
the  clouds  on  a  pedestal  not  its  own,  —  where  else  will 
it  be  felt  with  such  soul-stirring  effect  that  man  is  so  very 
little,  and  God  so  very  great?  Not  among  the  mingled 
palaces  and  hovels  of  Paris,  or  amid  the  half-infidel,  half- 
idolatrous  veneration  of  its  frivolous  and  theatrical  people. 
"  Change  grows  too  changeable,"  says  Byron,  when 
referring  to  the  state  of  matters  twenty  years  ago.  "  In 
what  circumstances,  think  you,"  says  Dr.  M'Crie,  in  ad- 
dressing a  correspondent,  "  if  you  and  I  were  to  retire  for 
two  years  to  some  sequestered  island,  would  we  find  our 
native  country  on  our  return  ?  "  The  amount  of  vicissi- 
tude and  revolution  spread  over  centuries  in  the  past  has 
been  concentrated  in  the  present  within  the  compass  of  a 
single  lifetime  ;  and  there  are  perhaps  few  things  more 
interesting  than  those  tide-marks,  if  we  may  so  express 
ourselves,  which,  like  the  measure  of  Thiers,  show  the  ebbs 
and  flows  of  circumstance  and  opinion,  and  the  wonderful 
suddenness  of  their  rise  and  fall.  Who  would  have  said 
twelve  years  ago  that  a  minister  of  France  would  have 
set  himself  to  court  popularity  and  to  strengthen  the 
kingly  authority  by  finding  a  tomb  for  the  Emperor  in 
Paris?  And  who  that  remembers-  that  the  remains  of 
Henry  IV.  —  Henri  Quatre  —  the  beloved  of  the  people, 
the  theme  of  their  tales  and  their  songs,  the  hero  of  their 
only  epic  —  were  torn  by  these  very  people  from  the  sep- 
ulchre, and  cast  ignominiously  into  a  ditch,  will  venture  to 
say  that  another  and  very  different  chapter  may  not  yet  be 
added  to  the  posthumous  history  of  Napoleon  ?  The  cur- 
rent that  sets  in  so  powerfully  in  one  direction  to-day,  may 
flow  as  powerfully  in  a  different  direction  to-morrow ;  and 
the  half-idolatrous  respect  that  more  than  canonizes  the 
memory  and  the  remains  of  a  great  warrior  and  statesman 
now,  may  be  soon  exchanged  by  a  fickle  and  varying  peo- 
ple, ever  in  extremes,  for  a  detestation  equally  strong,  and 
surely  not  less  rational,  of  the  despotic  subverter  of  popu« 


JEAN  d'aCRE.  37 

lar  rights,  —  the  destroyer  of  a  million  and  a  half  of  crea- 
tures with  souls  as  undying  as  his  own,  —  the  cold-hearted 
and  selfish  calculator,  who  made  human  lives  the  coin  with 
which  he  bought  and  sold,  and  who  could  reckon  out  his 
tale  of  these,  and  pay  them  down,  as  coolly,  for  some 
definite  extent  of  wall  or  trench,  or  some  certain  amount 
of  territory,  as  the  land-agent  or  the  merchant  could  the 
common  circulating  medium,  when  employed  in  their  re- 
spective professions.  We  are  afraid  there  still  awaits  a 
discipline  of  despotism,  suffering,  and  blood  for  the  people 
»^hose  admiration  can  rise  no  higher  than  the  greatness  of 
a  "N^apoleon. 


V. 

JEAN  D'ACRE. 

The  fortress  of  Jean  d'Acre,  the  main  stronghold  of  the 
Levant,  is  now  connected  a  second  time,  within  the  course 
of  forty  years,  with  the  history  of  Great  Britain.  And  in 
both  instances  the  national  success  has  been  very  signal, 
and  the  objects  attained  of  a  strikingly  similar  character. 
Europe  was  first  taught  before  the  ramparts  of  Jean  d'Acre 
that  the  greatest  of  modern  conquerors  was  not  invincible. 
The  history  of  Napoleon,  until  he  took  up  his  position  in 
front  of  this  eastern  fortress,  was  summed  up  in  a  series  of 
victories;  nor  could  one  so  familiar  with  conquest  have 
anticipated  defeat  here.  The  garrison  consisted  mainly  of  a 
semi-barbarous  and  half-disciplined  soldiery,  who  were  fast 
losing  their  ancient  military  character ;  the  fortifications  of 
the  place  belonged  at  the  time  to  that  obsolete  and  less 
approved  school  of  defence  whose  peculiar  defects  had  been 
first  detected,  more  than  an  age  before,  by  the  countrymen 
of  the  assailants,  —  of  all  military  men  the  most  skilful  Id 
4 


38  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

caiTying  on  such  warfare.  The  walls  yielded  to  an  inces- 
sant storm  of  shot  and  shell ;  and  the  best  troops  of  France, 
under  the  command  of  by  far  her  ablest  general,  were  led 
repeatedly  to  the  attack.  But  they  returned  time  after 
time  baffled  and  broken.  Jean  d'Acre,  tottering  apparently 
to  its  fall,  and  half-dismantled  and  half-garrisoned,  resisted 
their  utmost  efforts.  A  mere  handful  of  Englishmen 
fought  in  the  breach ;  and  He  who  can  save  by  many  or  by 
few  had  willed  that  their  efforts  in  every  instance  should 
be  crowned  with  complete  success.  The  siege  was  raised ; 
the  key  of  Palestine  passed  not  into  the  hands  of  Napoleon ; 
the  besiegers  fell  back  upon  Egypt ;  disaster  followed 
disaster ;  Nelson  annihilated  their  fleet  at  the  Nile  ;  their 
leader  slunk  away  from  them ;  the  army  of  Abercromby 
cooped  up  their  forces  amid  the  sand-hills  of  Alexandiia ; 
and  their  scheme  of  eastern  conquest  finally  terminated  in 
so  inglorious  an  abandonment  of  the  enterprise  that  they 
owed  their  very  safety  mainly  to  tlie  sufferance  of  the 
British.  Napoleon  afterwards  opened  his  trenches  before 
stronger  fortresses,  and  they  fell.  A  single  campaign  threw 
open  the  cities  of  Prussia  to  him;  he  gave  law  to  the 
armed  millions  of  Spain,  Austria,  and  Holland  :  but  on  the 
solitary  wastes  of  Judea  there  awaited  another  destiny ; 
and  the  stars  in  their  courses  fought  against  him  and  pre- 
vailed, when  his  scheme  of  conquest  led  him  there.  His 
enterprise,  and  the  apparently  inadequate  means  through 
which  it  was  defeated,  remind  one  of  the  old  Grecian  story 
of  the  open  space  left  by  the  countrymen  of  Ajax  in  the 
forefront  of  their  armies,  long  after  the  hero's  death,  but  in 
which  they  believed  he  still  continued  to  take  his  stand. 
A  famous  warrior  of  the  enemy,  it  is  said,  espying  the 
opening  in  the  heat  of  battle,  rushed  into  it  to  make  his 
way  through,  but  he  was  instantly  felled  to  the  ground  by 
some  invisible  antagonist,  and  then  dashed  back  upon  his 
friends.  Judea,  so  long  trodden  under  foot  by  every  en- 
emy, however  mean  or  contemptible,  seems  in  the  present 
century  to  represent  that  open  space. 


JEAN  D'ACRE.  39 

Forty  years  have  passed  since  the  discomfiture  of  Napo- 
leon before  the  walls  of  Jean  d'Acre.  A  new  scene  of 
things  has  arisen.  The  conqueror,  after  performing  the 
part  to  which  he  had  been  appointed,  was  conquered  in 
turn,  and  died  in  captivity  and  exile;  and  another  con- 
queror has  arisen,  —  a  man  of  far  inferior  power,  but  with 
immensely  inferior  powers  to  contend  with.  Hall  of  Lei- 
cester, in  one  of  the  most  sublime  of  his  compositions,  has 
compared  the  terrible  Napoleon  to  an  eagle  burying  its 
beak  and  talons  in  the  quivering  flesh  of  living  victims,  — 
tearing  the  still  sentient  nerves  asunder,  and  drinking  the 
warm  blood.  Meheraet  Ali  may  be  regarded  rather  as  a 
vulture,  who  attacks  but  the  dead  and  dying.  He  has 
been  dissevering  the  limbs  of  a  victim  somewhat  less  than 
half  alive.  A  great  empire  seems  passing  into  extinction  ; 
and  the  Pasha  of  Egypt  —  sagacious,  energetic,  brave  — 
is  exactly  one  of  those  characters,  so  frequent  in  history, 
that  become  at-  such  periods  the  monarchs  of  the  minor 
states  which  spring  up  in  the  room  of  the  great  departed 
power,  just  as  the  place  of  a  mighty  oak  or  chestnut  comes 
to  be  occupied,  when  it  had  sunk  into  decay,  by  whole 
thickets  of  inferior  growth.  He  had  appropriated  Egypt, 
and  the  claim  of  the  successful  soldier  had  been  fully  recog- 
nized by  at  least  all  possessed  of  power  enough  to  challenge 
it.  Syria  lies  adjacent;  and  of  Syria,  by  far  the  most 
interesting  portion  is  comprised  in  that  land,  so  peculiarly 
a  land  of  promise,  of  which  prophecy  is  so  full,  and  which 
has  been  the  scene  of  events  compared  with  which  all  in 
the  course  of  human  affairs  that  have  taken  place  in  the 
other  lands  of  the  globe  sink  into  utter  insignificance.  And 
Syria,  apparently  as  defenceless  as  the  blank  space  in  the 
ancient  Gi'ecian  army,  seemed  to  lie  even  more  open  to 
Meheraet  Ali  than  to  Napoleon.  He  possessed  himself  of 
Jean  d'Acre,  the  key  of  the  country, — the  identical  fortress 
which  a  few  dozen  Englishmen,  assisted  by  a  half-disci- 
plined horde  of  Turks,  had  maintained  against  the  greatest 
general  and  the  best  soldiers  of  France.     He  strength- 


40  HISTORICAL  AND  BIOGRAPHICAL. 

ened  the  fortifications  on  the  most  approved  principles ; 
he  surmounted  them  with  nearly  two  hundred  cannon ;  lie 
stored  the  magazines  of  the  place  with  supplies  for  at  least 
a  six  months'  siege ;  he  furnished  it  with  a  garrison  of  six 
thousand  veteran  troops.  A  few  British  vessels  cast 
anchor  before  it,  under  the  fire  of  at  least  a  hundred  and 
twenty  cannon  and  twenty  huge  mortars,  and  bombarded 
it  for  three  hours.  What  has  been  the  result  ?  An 
unseen  hand  was  raised  in  the  conflict,  and  the  fate  of 
Syria  decided  at  a  single  blow.  In  the  heat  of  the  engage- 
ment a  terrible  explosion  took  place  within  the  fortress, 
that  shook  the  earth  and  the  walls  like  an  earthquake  ;  a 
huge  cloud  shot  up  over  the  place,  fold  beyond  fold,  till  it 
seemed  to  reach  the  central  heavens,  and  then  passed 
slowly  and  heavily  away ;  and  when  it  had  cleared  off,  it 
was  found  that  one  third  of  the  city  had  been  utterly 
destroyed,  as  if  by  the  earthquake  predicted  in  the  Apoca- 
lypse, and  nearly  one  third  the  garnson  buried  in  the  ruins. 
There  was  scarcely  a  house  left  habitable  within  the  walls. 
The  principal  magazine  had  caught  fire ;  and  thus  the  ruin 
of  the  forti*ess  has  been  signal  in  proportion  to  the  means 
taken  for  its  defence.  The  firing  slacked  immediately 
afler,  and  then  finally  ceased  ;  and  at  midnight  the  surviv- 
ing portion  of  the  garrison  stole  silently  out  of  the  place, 
which  was  taken  possession  of  about  daybreak  by  a  party 
of  the  besiegers.  They  found  it  a  terrific  scene  of  devas- 
tation, covered  with  shattered  ruins,  sprinkled  with  blood, 
and  strewed  with  dissevered  limbs  and  dismembered  car- 
casses. An  immense  hollow,  like  the  crater  of  a  volcano, 
occupies  the  place  where  the  magazine  lately  stood ;  and 
for  the  space  of  a  mile  around  nothing  appears  but  the 
broken  fragments  of  what  were  once  buildings,  scathed  and 
blackened  by  fire,  and  the  mangled  bodies  of  men  and  ani- 
mals piled  in  heaps  upon  cinders  and  rubbish.  In  the 
course  of  the  day,  a  portion  of  the  garrison,  amounting  to 
about  seven  hundred  infantry,  intimidated  apparently  by 
the  raountaiijeers,  marched  back  to  the  place,  and,  delivering 


JEAN  d'ACRE.  41 

up  tlieir  arras,  surrendered  themselves  prisoners  of  war. 
Tliere  are  more  than  two  thousand  prisoners  besides ;  and 
of  the  whole  garrison,  not  one  sixth  part  is  said  to  have 
escaped.  The  loss  of  the  assailants  amounts  to  but  twenty- 
three  killed,  and  about  fifty  wounded. 

One  inevitable  result  of  this  important  and  very  remark- 
able event  will  be  the  signal  diminution,  perhaps  the 
thorough  annihilation,  of  the  aggressive  power  of  Mehemet 
Ali.  If  possessed  of  sagacity  enough  rightly  to  estimate 
his  position,  —  a  position  not  unlike  that  of  Napoleon 
when  he  rejected  the  terms  of  peace  proffered  him  after 
the  disaster  of  Moscow,  —  he  may  still  retain  the  sove- 
reignty of  Egypt ;  but  it  is  impossible  that  he  can  now 
become  the  conqueror  of  Syria.  He  has  entered  the  gap, 
like  the  old  warrior,  and  been  struck  down,  just  as  Napo- 
leon, when  he  attempted  entering  upon  it,  was  forced 
back.  The  space,  for  that  great  purpose  at  which  the 
6nger  of  Revelation  has  been  pointed  for  nearly  the  last 
three  thousand  years,  has  been  kept  clear,  and  the  time 
of  the  accomplishment  of  this  purpose  seems  fast  approach- 
ing. Is  there  nothing  remarkable  in  the  fact  that  the  two 
great  conquerors  of  the  nineteenth  century  should  have 
made  their  attempts  upon  it,  —  the  one  backed  by  the 
identical  means  which  had  been  employed  against  the 
other,  —  and  that  what  the  one  found  so  powerful  in 
resisting  him  should  have  proved  of  no  avail  in  the  other's 
defence  ?  Napoleon  was  to  be  resisted,  and  Jean  d'Acre 
became  impregnable ;  Mehemet  Ali  was  to  be  dispossessed 
and  turned  back,  and  Jean  d'Acre  fell  in  three  hours. 
And  yet  it  seems  to  be  a  mere  gap  among  the  nations,  a 
solitary  and  empty  space,  that  has  been  thus  defended,  — 
a  few  skeleton  cities,  a  few  depopulated  villages,  a  few 
sandy  plains,  a  few  barren  hills,  the  long  valley  of  the 
Jordan,  Gennesaret,  Galilee,  Jerusalem,  and  the  rocky 
eminence  of  Calvary.  A  great  nation  seems  dying  away 
from  amid  the  wastes  of  this  more  than  classic  country, 
leaving  the  place  well-nigh  tenantless.  Others  have  arisen 
4* 


42  HISTORICAL  AXD   BIOGRAPHICAL.. 

to  take  possession  in  their  room,  but  they  have  been  vio- 
lently held  back.  The  land  still  waits  unoccupied  for  the 
appointed  inhabitants. 


VI. 

THE  CROMWELL  CONTROVERSY. 

Our  readers  must  have  remarked,  with  some  degree  of 
amusement,  the  progress  of  the  controversy  still  raging 
x'egarding  an  important  clause  in  the  Marble  History  of 
England  now  in  the  couree  of  being  chiselled,  at  the 
national  expense,  in  the  new  House  of  Commons.  Every 
one  agrees  that,  in  orcler  to  impart  to  the  record  any 
degree  of  truth  at  all,  it  must  contain  a  vast  number  of 
clauses  that  will  do  no  honor  to  the  marble,  and  that  will 
be  unable  to  receive  honor  from  it.  It  will  contain  the 
Marian  clause,  in  the  form  of  a  grim,  ngly  female,  smelling 
horribly  of  blood  and  fire  ;  and  the  Henry  VIII.  clause, 
in  the  shape  of  a  puffy-cheeked,  truculent  bully,  surrounded 
by  a  group  of  skeleton  wives,  some  of  them  bearing  their 
dissevered  heads  under  their  elbows ;  and  the  Charles  II. 
and  James  VII.  clauses  ;  and  a  great  many  other  disrepu- 
table clauses  besides,  some  of  them  of  more  modern,  some 
of  them  of  more  ancient  date,  on  the  insertion  of  which 
all  are  agreed.  The  entire  dispute  hinges  on  the  singu- 
larly brilliant  clause  Oliver  Cromwell,  respecting  the 
insertion  of  which  there  are,  it  would  seem,  many  diverse 
opinions.  Some  assert  that  the  clause  Oliver  should,  like 
the  clause  William  the  Conqueror,  or  the  clause  Richard 
in.,  be  introduced  in  full ;  others  maintain,  on  the  con- 
trary, that  it  should  not  be  introduced  in  full,  nor  intro- 
duced at  all,  and  that  there  should  be  even  no  hiatus  left 


THE   CROMWELL   CONTROVERSY.  43 

to  indicate  its  existence,  but  that  the  flat,  moody  clause 
Charles  I.  should  run  in  without  break,  as  printers  say,  with 
the  miserable  clause  Charles  II. ;  while  a  third  class,  content 
to  halve  the  difference,  recommend  that  the  clause  Oliver 
should  not  be  inserted,  but  that  its  place  should  be  repre- 
sented by  a  wide  blank,  suited  to  serve  the  purpose  of  a 
line  of  asterisks  in  a  piece  of  abridged  narrative.  Now, 
doubtful  as  the  fact  may  seem,  there  is  actually  some 
meaning  in  this  controversy.  In  its  ostensible  relation  to 
a  bit  of  marble,  it  merely  involves  the  not  very  important 
question,  whether  the  new  House  of  Commons  is  to  be 
adorned  by  some  sixty  statues  or  so,  or  by  only  fifty-nine  ; 
but  in  its  true  relation  to  principle  it  involves  a  question 
of  somewhat  greater  magnitude,  —  the  existing  amount 
of  liberal  opinion ;  and  its  producing  springs  lie  deep 
among  the  great  parties  of  the  country. 

One  very  important  party  in  the  transaction  is  the  Book 
of  Common  Prayer.  Among  the  'Presbyterians  of  Scot- 
land, as  with  the  better  English  historians,  Charles  I. 
does  not  stand  high.  Such  was  the  character  of  his 
government,  that  they  had  as  one  man  to  take  up  arms 
against  it ;  and  it  is  known  that,  save  for  their  success  on 
that  occasion,  the  Star  Chamber  would  have  become  as 
permanent  an  institution  in  England  as  the  Bastile  did  on 
the  opposite  side  of  the  Channel;  that  the  new  mode  of 
raising  ship-money  would  have  formed  the  model  for 
levying  all  the  other  taxes ;  and  that  the  English  House 
of  Commons  would  have  shared  exactly  the  same  flite  as 
that  of  the  nearly  contemporaiy  French  Chamber,  the 
States-General,  under  Louis  XIII.  The  British  Govern- 
ment would  have  ceased  to  be  representative  ;  the  religion 
of  Laud  would  have  become  for  a  time  that  of  the  two 
kingdoms,  and  then  have  merged  into  the  Romanism  of 
the  third  ;  and  the  state  officers,  assisted  by  the  bishops, 
would  have  meanwhile  carried  on  the  agreeable  amuse- 
ment of  shutting  up  honest  men  for  life  in  dungeons, 
confiscating  their  properties,  and  cutting  out  their  ears,  or, 


44  .  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

if  the  ears  bad  been  previously  cut  out,  of  grubbing  up 
the  stumps.  Nor  do  we  estimate  more  highly  the  personal 
character  of  the  man  than  his  principles  of  government. 
He  was  a  kind  husband,  and  amiably  suffered  his  popish 
wife  to  influence  the  national  councils,  which  was,  of  course, 
something  in  his  favor ;  and,  when  unfortunate,  he  had  a 
profound  sympathy  for  himself  and  his  family,  —  the  true 
way  of  eliciting  the  sympathy  of  others  ;  and  this  was 
doubtless  something  in  his  favor  too.  But  we  decidedly 
demur  to  the  titles  of  Saint  and  Martyr,  in  their  ordinary 
and  unqualified  meanings.  We  must  at  least  be  permitted 
to  regard  him  as  the  unique  saint,  who,  according  to  the 
old  Scotch  chronicler,  "  swaire  terribly,"  and  played  golf 
on  the  Sabbath ;  and  as  the  extraordinary  martyr,  whose 
head  was  cut  off  because  his  word  could  not  be  believed. 
Such,  pretty  generally,  is  the  Presbyterian  estimate  of 
Charles ;  but  in  the  estimate  of  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer  there  are  no  such  qualifications.  He  is  there  the 
glorious  martyr  and-  the  blessed  king ;  and  Episcopacy 
still  fasts  once  a  year  in  all  her  churches,  to  avert  the 
judgments  that  may  be  still  impending  over  the  land  for 
his  death.  Much,  of  course,  depends  on  being  used  to  a 
thing;  and  there  are,  we  doubt  not,  devout  men  who  can 
join  in  the  hymn  which  she  sings  on  the  occasion  with 
much  earnestness ;  but  to  us  it  has  ever  appeared  to  be 
considerably  more  akin  to  the  parodies  of  Hone  and  Carlile 
than  to  the  greater  part  of  the  compositions  which  Hone 
and  Carlile  parodied.  There  can  be  no  mistake  regarding 
the  slain  man  to  which  it  refers  ;  the  title  fixes  that :  it  is 
a  hymn  "  to  be  used  yearly  upon  the  thirtieth  of  January, 
being  the  day  of  the  martyrdom  of  the  blessed  King 
Charles  the  First,  to  implore  the  mercy  of  God"  "that 
the  guilt  of  that  sacred  and  innocent  blood  may  not  at  any 
time  hereafter  be  visited  upon  "  the  people  or  their  chil- 
dren. The  slain  man  is  unequivocally  the  man  Charles ; 
and  yet  it  is  thus  we  find  him  spoken  of  in  the  hymn,  — 
a  bizarre  piece  of  mosaic,  it  may  be  mentioned  in  the 


THE   CROMWELL   CONTROVERSY.  45 

passing,  composed  of  a  curious  mixture  of  gems  filched 
from  the  Scriptures,  and  of  bits  of  paste  broken  from  off 
the  Apocrypha :  — 

"  O  my  soul !  come  not  thou  into  their  secret ;  unto  their  assem- 
bly, mine  honor,  be  not  thou  united ;  for  in  their  anger  they  slew  a 
man.  —  Gen.  xhx.  6. 

"  Even  the  man  of  thy  right  hand :  the  Son  of  man,  whom  thou 
hadst  made  so  strong  for  thine  own  self.  —  Ps.  Ixxx.  17. 

"  In  the  sight  of  the  unwise  he  seemed  to  die  ;  and  his  departure 
was  taken  for  misery.  —  Wisd.  iii.  2. 

"  They  fools  counted  his  life  madness,  and  his  end  to  be  without 
honor ;  but  he  is  in  peace  !  —  Wisd.  v.  4  and  iii.  3. 

"  How  is  he  numbered  with  the  children  of  God  ;  and  his  lot  ia 
among  the  saints !  —  Wisd.  v.  5. 

"  But,  O  Lord  God,  to  whom  vengeance  belongeth,  thou  God  to 
whom  vengeance  belongeth,  be  favorable  and  gracious  to  Sion.  — 
Ps.  xciv.  1  and  li.  18. 

"  Be  merciful,  O  Lord,  unto  thy  people  whom  thou  hast  redeemed, 
and  lay  not  innocent  blood  to  our  charge.  —  Deut.  xxi.  8." 

Charles  I.,  the  man  of  God's  right  hand !  the  Son  of  man, 
whom  God  made  strong  for  himself!  It  is  not  wonderful 
that  the  church  which  can  thus  continue  to  appropriate  to 
the  wretched  Charles  the  glory  of  the  adorable  Redeemer, 
should  exert  some  little  influence  in  preventing  the  apo- 
theosis of  the  Pilate  who  put  him  to  death.^  The  revival, 
too,  of  the  old  Canterburian  party  in  England,  —  true 
representatives  of  Charles's  infatuated  advisers,  —  who, 
amid  the  light  of  the  present  day,  can  regard  the  revolu- 
tion to  which  her  Majesty  owes  her  crown  as  simply  the 
Rebellion  of  1688,  has  of  course  its  effect  on  the  contro- 
versy. The  special  admirers  of  the  "  Blessed  Charles  the 
Martyr "  still  muster  stronger  within  the  pale  of  the 
English  Church  — though  they  seem  fast  quitting  it  for  a 
more  congenial  communion  — than  they  have  done  for  at 
least  a  century  previous ;  and  we  may  be  well  assured  that 

1  The  fast  of  the  royal  martyr  is  no  longer  celebrated. 


46  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

in  their  hands  the  "form  of  prayer  and  fasting  for  the 
thirtieth  of  January  "  will  be  no  dead-letter.  In  no  other 
churches  will  the  hymn  from  which  we  have  quoted  be 
sung  with  half  such  energy  as  in  the  churches  that  have 
got  their  crucifix-mounted  altars  perched  up  under  the 
east  window,  and  in  which  the  priest  prays  with  his  back 
to  the  people.  There  is  a  story  told  by  Franklin  of  the 
good  old  Puritans  of  New  England,  which  the  more 
rational  members  of  the  English  Church  might  perhaps 
do  well  to  ponder.  The  poor  people,  forced  from  their 
homes  by  the  fierce  intolerance  of  the  blessed  martyr, 
whose  martyrdom  led  to  the  blessings  of  toleration,  felt 
at  first  exceedingly  melancholy  in  the  savage  country 
of  solitary  wilds  and  deep  forests  in  which  they  were 
compelled  to  sojourn,  and  for  a  series  of  years  kept  the 
anniversary  of  their  arrival  as  a  fast ;  and  the  oftener 
they  fasted,  the  more  melancholy  they  became.  At  length, 
at  one  of  their  meetings  on  the  eve  of  an  anniversary, 
when  the  usual  fast  had  been  proposed,  an  honest  farmer 
rose  and  moved  an  amendment.  They  were  all  getting 
very  comfortable,  he  said,  if  they  could  but  see  it.  Their 
farms  were  improving  and  extending,  their  crops  becom- 
ing every  year  more  weighty  and  the  country  less  wild  ; 
they  were  living  in  peace,  too,  and  enjoying  liberty  of 
conscience;  and  he  moved,  therefore,  that,  instead  of 
holding  their  anniversary  as  a  fast,  they  should  forthwith 
convert  it  into  a  day  of  thanksgiving.  The  suggestion 
approved  itself  to  the  judgment  of  the  meeting  ;  the  fast 
was  suffered  to  drop,  and  the  day  of  thanksgiving  sub- 
stituted in  its  place ;  and  from  that  day  forward  the 
colony  continued  to  prosper,  Now,  we  are  of  opinion 
that  the  Church  of  England  has  fasted  quite  long  enough 
for  the  martyrdom  of  Charles.  It  was  an  event  of  an 
exceedingly  mixed  character  ;  it  had  party-colored  sides, 
like  the  gold  and  silver  shield  in  the  story;  and  the 
church,  regarding  it  on  merely  the  unfavorable  one,  has 
now  been  fasting  for  it  nearly  a,  hundred  and  ninety  years. 


THE  CROMWELL   CONTROVERSY'.  47 

She  should  now  by  all  means  try  to  get  a  glimpse  of  it  on 
the  other  side,  and,  like  the  worthy  New  England  Puri- 
tans, convert  her  fast  into  a  thanksgiving.  We  are  pretty 
much  assured  the  country  would  be  none  the  worse  for 
the  change.  There  are  weightier  national  sins  for  which 
to  fast  than  the  sin  of  the  martyrdom  ;  and  were  we  but 
grateful  enough  for  its  benefits,  we  might  avoid,  among 
other  perils,  all  danger  of  committing  the  great  national 
folly  of  excluding  from  our  marble  records  the  name  of 
our  greatest  ruler. 

The  question  at  issue  in  this  case  is  unquestionably  a 
British  one, —  Scotch  as  well  as  English ;  but  it  strikes  us 
that  the  Scotch  are  in  more  favorable  circumstances  for 
arriving  at  an  impartial  decision  regarding  it  than  their 
neighbors  in  the  south.  In  England  the  two  great  parties 
still  exist,  with  many  of  their  old  predilections  and  antip- 
athies imdiluted  and  unchanged  ;  the  one  of  which  Crom- 
well led  on  to  victory,  and  the  other  of  which  he  defeated 
and  threw  down.  The  question  regarding  him  is  still  a 
party  question  there,  argued  on  the  one  side  in  many  a 
goodly  volume,  and  sung  once  every  year  in  their  churches 
by  the  other,  in  music  set  to  the  organ.  Scotland,  on  the 
other  hand,  dealt  more  with  Crmowell  as  a  nation :  the 
Protesters  stood  widely  aloof,  and  did  not  take  up  arms ; 
but  the  great  bulk  of  the  nation  —  all  its  Resolutioners  and 
all  its  Cavaliers — joined  issue  against  him  on  behalf  of 
Charles  II.,  and  got  heartily  drubbed  for  their  pains.  We 
are  nearly  in  such  circumstances  as  the  English  themselves 
would  be  were  the  question,  not  whether  Cromwell  should 
have  a  statue  in  the  British  House  of  Commons  among  the 
other  supreme  rulers  of  England,  but  whether  Napoleon 
should  have  a  statue  in  the  French  Chamber  of  Deputies, 
among  the  other  supreme  rulers  of  France.  True,  Crom- 
well beat  us,  —  and  we  don't  much  like  the  memory  of 
our  defeats ;  but  we  flatter  ourselves  that  it  was  only  be- 
cause our  "  Committee  of  Church  and  State,"  contrary  to  the 
judgment  of  Leslie,  was  a  little  too  eager  to  beat   him. 


48  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

We  solace  the  national  vanity,  too,  by  remembering  that  he 
himself  was  half  a  Scotchman  :  we  can  still  point  out,  from 
the  burgh  of  Queensferry,  the  old  house  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  Frith  in  which  his  mother,  Elizabeth  Stewart, 
first  saw  the  light ;  and,  further,  we  call  to  mind  that  the 
blood  of  the  Bruce  flowed  as  purely  in  the  veins  of  the 
plebeian  Cromwell  as  in  those  of  the  royal  martyr  himself, 
and  that  he  represented  the  indomitable  hero  of  Bannock- 
burn  immensely  better.  Above  all,  we  remember  how  very 
different  the  treatment  which  we  received  from  the  man  we 
fought  against,  from  that  which  we  received  from  the  man 
we  fought  for.  And  so  we  at  least  deem  ourselves  impartial, 
and  marvel  how  there  should  live  Englishmen  in  the  present 
age  who  could  so  much  as  dream  of  excluding  the  record  of 
the  Protector  from  the  general  record  of  the  country,  as 
exhibited  in  its  house  of  representatives.  Save  for  Pusey- 
ism.  High  Churchism,  and  the  rather  equivocal  service  in 
"our  most  excellent  Prayer  E^ook,"  the  question  could  never 
have  been  mooted.  We  have  seen  it  virtually  decided  in 
children's  toy-books  that  were  written  half  a  century  ago. 
Some  thirty  yeai*s  since,  when  we  kept  our  library  in  a  chip- 
box  six  inches  square  by  five  inches  deep,  we  were  in  the 
proud  possession  of  two  tall  volumes,  four  inches  high  by 
three  inches  across,  the  one  of  which,  for  the  use  of  good 
boys  and  girls,  contained  notices  and  woodcuts  of  all  the 
Scottish  monarchs,  from  the  Davids  down  to  James  VI. ; 
and  the  other,  notices  and  woodcuts  of  all  the  English  ones, 
from  William  the  Conqueror  down  to  George  III.  And  each 
little  book,  we  well  remembei*,  had  its  single  uncrowned 
figure,  and  its  single  notice,  pretaining  to  a  great  monarch 
that  wanted  the  kingly  title.  The  figure  in  the  one  case 
was  that  of  a  mailed  warrior  trampling  on  a  lion,  and  the 
figure  in  the  other  that  of  a  warrior,  also  in  mail,  with 
a  marshal's  truncheon  in  his  hand.  The  legend  affixed  to 
the  one  was  "  Sir  William  Wallace,  Protector  of  Scotland," 
and  that  borne  by  the  other,  "  Oliver  Cromwell,  Lord  Pro- 
tector of  England  j "  and  such  was  the  interest  attached  to 


THE   CROMWELL   CONTROVERSY.  49 

the  prints  and  the  notices,  that  the  little  books  at  length 
learned  to  open  of  themselves  at  the  pages  which  exhibited 
the  uncrowned  warriors  ;  for  the  one,  with  scarce  a  single 
exception,  was  the  greatest  and  noblest  of  the  Scotchmen, 
as  the  Bruce,  though  of  a  heroic  nature,  was  less  disinter- 
estedly a  patriot ;  and  the  other,  with  scarce  a  single  excep- 
tion, was,  as  far  as  we  know,  the  greatest  and  noblest  of 
the  Englishmen ;  for,  though  the  figure  of  Alfred  looms 
large  in  the  distance,  the  exaggerating  mists  of  the  past 
close  thick  around  him,  and  we  fail  to  ascertain  his  true 
proportions  through  the  cloud.  Here,  we  contend,  in  the 
child's  books,  and  by  the  child,  the  grave  question  at  issue, 
of  statue  or  no  statue,  was  fairly  decided.  The  child's 
books  found  fitting  space  in  their  pages  for  the  efl3gies  of 
the  two  Protectors;  and  the  child  soon  learned  to  give 
unwitting  evidence  that  the  effigies  of  none  of  the  others 
had  at  least  a  better  right  to  be  there. 

But  Cromwell,  it  is  urged,  was  not  a  king  :  he  said  wo, 
though  he  might  have  said  yes,  when  oflfered  the  crown ; 
and  his  statue  ought  to  be  excluded  on  the  strength  of  the 
monosyllable.  We  would  be  inclined  to  sustain  the  objec- 
tion had  it  been  proposed  to  erect  Cromwell's  statue,  not 
in  the  British  House  of  Commons,  but  in  the  Herald's 
Office.  But  history  is  a  thing  of  veritable  facts,  not  of 
heraldic  quibbles.  King  is  a  simple  word  of  four  letters, 
and  Lord  Protector  a  compound  word  of  thirteen ;  but, 
translated  into  their  historic  meaning,  their  import  is 
exactly  the  same.  They  just  mean,  and  no  more,  the  su- 
preme governor  of  the  country.  The  only  real  difierence 
between  Cromwell  and  the  Charleses  on  either  side  is,  that 
he  was  a  great  and  good  suj^reme  governor,  and  that  they 
were  little  and  bad  ones.  Ah  !  but  Cromwell,  it  is  urged 
further,  has  no  legal  existence  in  our  chronicles.  A  statute, 
still  enforced,  efiaced  his  name  from  the  constitutional 
annals,  by  giving  his  years  and  his  acts  to  his  successor. 
History,  we  reply,  is  no  more  a  thing  of  legal  fictions  than 
of  heraldic  quibbles.  By  a  legal  fiction  Cromwell  may  bo 
5 


50  HISTORICAL  AND  BIOGRAPHICAL. 

merely  a  bit  of  Charles  II,,  and  we  know  that  by  a  legal 
fiction  husband  and  wife  are  but  one  person  ;  but  we  also 
know  that  the  historian  who  should  represent  George 
IV.  and  his  wife  Caroline  as  merely  the  two  halves  of  a 
single  individual,  would  make  sadly  perplexed  work  of 
the  "  Queen's  Trial."  If  Charles  II.  was  also  Cromwell,  he 
was  assuredly  the  most  extraordinary  character  that  ever 
lived  —  much  more  emphatically  than  Bacon,  as  described 
by  Pope,  — 

"  The  wisest,  greatest,  meanest  of  mankind; " 

and  his  statue,  if  that  of  the  Protector  is  to  be  excluded, 
should  by  all  means  indicate  the  fact.  Let  him  be  repre- 
sented as  an  eastern  sept  represent  one  of  their  gods,  — 
the  "  man-lion,"  as  a  compound  monster,  half-brute,  half- 
man,  with  double  fore-arms  articulated  at  his  elbows ;  or 
let  his  efiigy  be  placed  astride  that  of  a  tall  figure  in  a 
cloak,  like  the  Old  Man  of  the  Sea  astride  the  shoulders 
of  Sinbad ;  or,  to  render  the  allegory  complete,  let  there  be 
no  human  form  placed  on  the  pedestal  at  all,  but  simply  a 
good  representation  in  stone  of  -^sop's  live  ass  and  dying 
lion.  For  the  sake  of  truth,  however,  the  lion  would  re- 
quire to  be  exhibited,  not  as  dying,  but  dead.  Cromwell 
was  dead,  and,  as  if  to  make  all  sure,  cold,  for  considerably 
more  than  a  twelvemonth  ere  a  monarch  or  lawyer  dared 
to  raise  the  assinine  heel  against  him.  "  They  hung  your 
father,  lady,"  was  the  ungenerous  taunt  dealt,  many  years 
after  the  event,  to  one  of  his  daughters.  "  Yes,"  was  the 
proud  reply,  "  but  he  was  dead  first." 

We  do  not  think  the  statue  of  Cromwell  should  be  as- 
signed its  proper  niche,  were  it  but  for  the  sake  of  the 
associations  which  it  is  fitted  to  awaken,  and  the  lesson  in 
behalf  of  supreme  governors  in  general  which  it  is  suited 
to  teach.  Quivedo,  in  one  of  his  Visions  of  Hell,  as  quoted 
by  Cowper,  requested  his  black  conductor  to  show  him  the 
jail  in  which  they  kept  their  kings.  "7%ere,"  said  the 
guide,  "  there  you  have  the  whole  group  full  before  you." 


THE   CROMWELL  CONTROVERSY.  51 

"  Indeed  !  "  exclaimed  Quivedo,  "  they  seem  but  few  !  '* 
"  Few,  fellow !  "  replied  the  indignant  guide,  "  few  !  —  they 
are  all  that  ever  reigned,  though."  Cowper  objects  to  the 
imdiscriminating  severity  of  the  wit,  and  names  one  or  two 
kings,  such  as  Alfred  and  Edward  VL,  who  could  hardly 
be  regarded  as  inmates  of  Quivedo's  prison  ;  but  certainly, 
were  all  kings  of  the  type  of  the  royal  martyr,  his  father, 
and  his  two  sons,  —  the  British  kings  of  nearly  an  entire 
century,  be  it  remembered,  —  the  objection  would  scai'ce 
have  been  lodged.  It  would  be  of  importance,  surely,  as 
suited  to  produce  the  moral  effect  of  Cowper's  exception, 
to  have  inserted  full  in  the  middle  of  the  line  one  supreme 
governor  who  was  not  a  scoundrel,  and  who  was  not  a  fool. 
Very  different  indeed  would  be  the  associations  that  would 
haug  on  the  central  effigy,  from  those  which  the  two  effigies 
on  either  side  must  of  necessity  suggest.  The  smell  of 
blood  rises  rank  from  these  miserable  Stuarts,  and  it  is 
invariably  the  blood  of  the  best  of  their  land,  — the  blood 
of  honest  patriots  and  of  godly  men.  We  find  the  insen- 
sate marbles  associated  with  a  dark  record  of  crime,  and 
cruelty,  and  monstrous  infatuation;  they  are  suggestive 
of  the  melancholy  of  protracted  exile,  the  gloom  of  dun- 
geons, the  agonies  of  torture,  and  the  pangs  of  death,  —  of 
the  blood  of  God's  saints  shed  on  the  hills  like  water,  or 
flooding  the  public  scaffolds,  —  of  Scottish  maidens  tied  to 
stakes-Hnder  flood  mark,  to  perish  amid  the  rising  waters, 
—  and  of  venerable  English  matrons  burnt  alive.  It  speaks 
of  national  degradation  and  impotency ;  of  ever-recurring 
defeats,  and  inefficient,  disastrous  Wars  ;  of  unavenged 
insults  to  the  British  flag;  of  English  fleets  chased  into 
the  Thames  by  the  victorious  enemy ;  and  of  English 
towns  burnt  unavenged  on  its  shores.  Surely  it  were  well 
to  have  some  means  of  relief  at  hand  from  such  thick- 
coming  forces.  The  antidote  of  the  central  marble  is  im- 
peratively required.  It  opens  up,  amid  the  darkness  on 
either  hand,  a  vista  of  surpassing  glory.  We  see  England 
throned  in  the  midst  of  the  nations,  —  her  armies  victorious 


52  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL 

in  all  their  battles ;  her  navies  sweeping  the  seas  invinci- 
ble ;  her  voice  of  thunder  resounding  all  over  the  world  in 
behalf  of  religious  liberty  and  the  rights  of  man,  and  all 
over  the  world  feared,  respected,  and  obeyed ;  good  men 
everywhere  living  in  peace,  however  little  friendly  to  the 
magnanimous  Cromwell;  and  the  sword  of  persecution 
dropping  from  the  terror-palsied  hand  of  the  Papacy. 


VTI. 

THE  THIRD  FRENCH  REVOLUTION. 

Was  there  ever  an  age  of  the  world  like  the  present ! 
The  painted  scenes  in  a  theatre  do  not  shift  before  the 
eyes  of  the  spectators  more  suddenly,  or  apparently  more 
on  that  principle  of  strong  contrast  on  which  the  poet  and 
the  artist  rely  for  their  most  striking  effects,  than  dynas- 
ties and  forms  of  government  in  the  times  in  which  we 
live.  The  biography  of  Louis  Philippe  could  belong  to  but 
one  period  in  the  history  of  the  species. 

It  will  be  eighteen  years,  first  July,  since  the  writer  was 
employed,  on  a  clear  beautiful  evening,  in  the  immediate 
neighborhood  of  a  busy  seaport  of  the  north  of  Scotland, 
all  alive  at  the  time  with  the  turmoil  and  bustle  of  the 
herring-fishery;  and  a  few  neighbors,  whose  labors  for  the 
day  had  closed,  were  lounging  beside  him.  There  were 
two  French  luggers  in  the  harbor  furnished  with  crews  of 
stout  English-looking  seamen  from  Normandy,  —  crews 
at  least  thrice  as  numerous  as  the  herring  speculation  in 
which  they  were  engaged  could  ever  pay;  but  the  Gov- 
ernment of  their  country,  still  as  anxious  as  in  the  days  of 
Napoleon  to  create  a  navy,  made  up,  by  what  was  nomi- 
nally a  very  extravagant  bounty  on  fish,  but  in  reality  a 


THE   THIRD   FRENCH   REVOLUTIONi  53 

bounty  on  sea-faring  men,  the  amount  necessary  to  render 
their  undertaking  remunerative.  And  so  there,  in  the 
middle  of  a  group  of  fishing-boats  and  small  craft  of  the 
British  type,  lay  the  two  hulking-looking  foreigners,  one 
of  whicli  rejoiced  in  the  august  name  of  "  Le  Charles 
Dix^''  with  their  bare  brown  masts  and  their  dark,  half- 
unfurled  sails,  and  crowded  with  seamen  attired  in  dirty 
Guernsey  frocks  and  red  nightcaps.  The  post  came  in, 
and  a  newspaper,  still  damp  from  the  press,  was  handed  to 
a  neighbor.  He  opened  it,  and  repeated,  with  an  air  of 
mingled  astonishment  and  incredulity,  a  few  magical  words, 
—  "Revolution  in  France!  —  Three  days'  fighting! — Flight 
of  Charles  X. ! "  We  were  sensible,  as  the  words  were 
pronounced,  of  a  thrilling  sensation  similar  to  that  pi'odu^ed 
by  an  electric  shock.  Notliing  could  be  more  evident  than 
that  the  consequences  of  an  event  so  truly  great  could  not 
be  restricted  to  France.  A  new  epoch  had  arrived  in  the 
history  of  civilization  and  of  man  ;  but  what  was  to  be  its 
character?  The  curtain  had  arisen  literally  at  the  ringing 
of  a  bell ;  and  the  stage,  at  the  opening  of  the  piece,  as  at 
the  close  of  some  tragedies,  red  with  blood  and  cumbei'ed 
with  dead  bodies,  presented  the  imposing  spectacle  of  a 
falling  dynasty.  But  who  could  predicate  regarding  the 
nature  of  the  plot  on  which  the  general  drama  was  to  turn, 
or  anticipate  with  aught  of  confidence  the  outlines  of 
even  its  next  scene?  The  poor  Frenchmen  of  the  two 
luggers,  with  just  enough  of  bad  English  to  bargain  for 
herrings,  but  not  enough  to  understand  the  details  of  a 
revolution,  were  sadly  perplexed  by  the  intelligence,  of 
which  the  townspeople  present,  in  as  i3lentiful  a  lack  of 
French  as  they  manifested  of  English,  could  but  commu- 
nicate to  them  vaguely  enough  the  general  result.  They 
got  hold  of  the  newspaper,  and  scanned  it  with  all  the 
eager  excitability  of  their  nation,  though  apparently  to  little 
purpose.  They  could  merely  here  and  there  pick  out  a  few 
Norman  words  which  the  conquest  of  William  had  served 
to  naturalize  in  our  language,  and  pronounce  them  with 
5* 


54  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

tremendous  emphasis  after  the  French  mode  ;  but  all  they 
succeeded  in  picking  out  of  the  broad  sheet  seemed  to  be 
summed  up  in  the  emphatic  heading  of  the  editor's  article, 
—  Revolution  Francaise  —  Trois  Jours  de  Combat  —  JOa 
Fuite  de  Charles  Dixl  They  learned  quite  enough,  how- 
ever, to  exhibit  in  a  small  way  how  sliglit  a  hold  French 
kings  have  in  these  latter  times  on  the  affections  of  the 
French  people.  One  of  the  masters,  seizing  a  lump  of 
chalk,  stepped  to  the  stern  of  his  vessel,  and,  with  great 
coolness,  blotted  out  from  the  board  the  name  of  Charles 
Dix.  He  did  in  the  harbor  of  Cromarty,  on  a  minute 
scale,  what  his  countrymen  had  just  done  in  Paris. 

And  now  Paris  has  witnessed  yet  another  revolution. 
The  bell  has  rung  ;  the  scene  has  shifted  ;  drama  the 
second  has  come  as  suddenly  to  a  close  as  drama  the  first ; 
and  the  after-j^iece  begins,  like  its  predecessor,  with  fight- 
ing and  bloodshed,  and  the  masque-like  pageant  —  pictur- 
esquely symbolical  of  the  whole  event  —  of  an  empty 
throne  paraded  through  the  streets,  and  then  dashed  down 
and  burned  at  the  foot  of  the  "  column  of  July."  The 
effacing  chalk  has  been  applied,  and  the  name  of  another 
monarch  blotted  out.  And  amid  the  general  thrill  of 
undefinable  electric  interest  and  restless  anxiety,  there 
obtains  exactly  the  same  uncertainty  regarding  what  is  to 
come  next.  It  is  not  unworthy  of  notice,  that  the  thi'oe 
French  revolutions  have  in  reality  all  turned  on  one 
pivot,  and  that  some  of  the  shrewdest  of  our  contempo- 
raries have  been  led  egregiously  into  error  in  their  calcu- 
lations on  the  present  occasion,  simply  by  losing  sight  of 
it.  Nay,  a  similar  disregard  of  this  hinging-point,  and  of 
its  controlling  principle,  seems  to  have  been  the  fatal  error 
of  Louis  Philippe  himself.  "It  will  require  a  most  ex- 
traordinary and  unforeseen  combination  of  circumstances," 
said  the  Times,  in  an  article  on  the  Parisian  outburst, 
"before  any  government,  supported  by  an  ai-my  of  one 
hundred  thousand  men,  under  the  command  of  Marshal 
Bugeaud,  quartered  with  great  skill  in  the  outskirts  of 


THE   THIRD   FRENCH  REVOLUTION.  65 

Paris,  perfectly  prepared  for  action,  and  backed  by  eighteen 
fortresses,  will  be  compelled  to  capitulate  to  a  popular  in- 
surrection. We  suspect,  however,  it  will  turn  out  that  no 
serious  popular  insurrection  is  even  probable.  The  people 
have  been  stirred,  but  not  inflamed.  They  are  shaken,  but 
not  irritated ;  they  are  unarmed,  and  no  preparation  for 
insurrection  had  been  made.  Under  such  circumstances 
the  result  is  certain.  But  if  lives  are  lost  in  this  misera- 
ble brawl,  the  reckoning  will  be  heavy,  not  only  on  those 
who  inconsiderately  commenced  an  agitation  which  they 
had  no  power  to  bring  to  a  successful  termination,  but  on 
those  whose  obstinate  resistance  to  a  well-founded  de- 
mand rendered  such  an  appeal  to  the  populace  successful." 
Such  were  the  anticipations  of  the  Times  ;  and  not  a  few 
of  our  other  contemporaries  followed  in  its  wake.  Had 
they  taken  into  account  in  their  calculations  the  principle 
to  which  we  refer,  —  a  principle  first  pointed  out  at  a  time 
when  there  had  been  but  one  French  Revolution  from 
which  the  necessary  data  could  be  derived,  —  they  would 
have  reckoned  less  securely  on  the  hundred  thousand  sol- 
diers and  the  eighteen  fortresses.  France  is  emphatically 
the  great  military  nation  of  Europe.  But  though  it  pos- 
sesses what  are  in  reality  the  sinews  of  war,  that  is,  great 
military  ardor  and  many  people,  —  for  to  regard  money  as 
such  is  an  idle  unsolidity,  which,  while  it  has  the  dis- 
advantage of  being  commonplace,  wants  the  balancing 
advantage  of  being  true,  —  while  France  possesses,  we 
say,  a  warlike  people,  it  is  wanting  now,  as  in  the  days 
of  Napoleon,  and  at  every  former  period  of  its  history,  in 
the  wealth  necessary  to  purchase  their  service.  Its  rulera, 
therefore,  in  order  to  raise  those  great  armies  on  which 
the  power  and  character  of  the  nation  depend,  must 
always  appeal  to  its  warlike  sympathies ;  and  the  armies 
thus  formed  ai"e,  in  consequence,  what  armies,  in  at  least 
the  same  degree,  arc  nowhere  else  in  Europe,  —  merely 
armed  portions  of  the  people,  —  most  formidable,  as  all 
modern  history  has  shown,  for  purposes  of  foreign  aggres* 


66  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

sion,  but  in  the  hands  of  a  despot,  unless  like  Niipoleon, 
the  idol  of  the  soldiery,  dangerous  chiefly  to  himself. 
This  apparently  simple,  but  in  reality  profound  principle 
on  which  all  the  French  revolutions  have  hinged,  and 
Avhich  Louis  Philippe,  untaught  by  experience,  so  entirely 
forgot,  was  enunciated  for  the  lirst  time  by  Sir  James 
Mackintosh,  when  the  seventy  thousand  soldiere  brought 
by  Louis  XVI.  to  invest  the  "  Legislatm-e  and  capital  of 
France,  felt  that  they  were  citizens,  and  the  fabric  of 
despotism  fell  to  the  ground."  "It  was  the  apprehension 
of  Montesquieu,"  said  the  philosopher,  "  that  the  spirit  of 
increasing  armies  would  terminate  in  converting  Europe 
into  an  immense  camp,  in  clmnging  our  artisans  and  culti- 
vators into  military  savages,  and  reviving  the  age  of  Attila 
and  Genghis.  Events  are  our  preceptors,  and  France  has 
taught  us  that  this  evil  contains  in  itself  its  own  remedy 
and  limit.  A  domestic  army  cannot  be  increased  without 
increasing  the  number  of  its  ties  with  the  people,  and  of 
the  channels  by  which  popular  sentiment  may  enter  it. 
Every  man  that  is  added  to  the  army  is  a  new  link  that 
unites  it  to  the  nation.  If  all  citizens  were  compelled  to 
become  soldiers,  all  soldiers  must  of  necessity  adopt  the 
feelings  of  citizens ;  and  the  despots  cannot  increase  their 
army  without  admitting  into  it  a  greater  number  of  men 
interested  to  destroy  them.  A  small  army  may  have  sen- 
timents different  from  tlie  great  body  of  the  people,  and 
no  interest  in  common  with  them ;  but  a  numerous  soldiery 
cannot.  This  is  the  barrier  which  nature  has  opposed  to 
the  increase  of  armies.  Th«y  cannot  be  numerous  enough 
to  enslave  the  people,  without  becoming  the  jDeople  itself." 
It  was  on  the  unseen  rock  so  skilfully  marked  out  here 
that  Louis  XYL,  Charles  X.,  and  Louis  Philippe  made 
shipwreck  in  turn,  and  that  led  to  the  error  of  our  con- 
temporaries. They  took  note  of  the  hundred  thousand 
men  and  the  eighteen  fortresses,  but  not  of  the  all-influ- 
ential principle  which,  in  the  revolution  of  last  week, 
rendered  them  of  no  avail. 


THE   THIRD    FRENCH  REVOLUTION.  57 

Events  have  exhibited  the  influence  of  the  second 
French  revolution  on  this  country  as,  in  the  main,  whole- 
some. It  furnished  the  moving  power  through  which 
parliamentary  reform  was  carried,  and  the  representation 
of  the  empire  placed  on  a  broader  and  firmer  basis  than 
at  any  former  period.  It  formed  the  primary  cause  of  the 
abolition  of  slavery  in  our  colonies ;  destroyed  monopoly 
in  the  East  Indies ;  reorganized  our  municipal  corpora- 
tions ;  and,  above  all,  gave  to  the  people  a  standing-coora 
virtually,  though  not  nominally,  legislative,  through  which, 
in  the  character  of  a  league  such  as  that  which  cai'ried 
the  great  free-trade  question,  they  can  constitute  them- 
eelves  into  a  kind  of  outer  chamber,  whose  decisions,  if 
there  be  in  reality  a  clamant  case  to  give  union  and  enei*gy 
to  their  exertions,  the  two  inner  chambers  must  ultimately 
be  content  to  register.  And  if,  after  all,  it  did  not  do 
more,  it  is  only  because  all  merely  external  reforms, 
whether  political  or  personal,  are  in  their  nature  unsat- 
isfactory, and  because  men  can  only  be  made  happier 
by  being  made  wiser  and  better.  It  was  through  the 
inherent  justice  of  the  second  French  revolution,  be  it 
remembered,  and  the  great  moderation  manifested  in 
turning  it  to  account,  that  this  amount  of  good  was  pro- 
duced. Never,  on  the  other  hand,  was  there  an  event  less 
friendly  to  the  progress  of  civilization,  and  to  the  true  rights 
of  man,  than  the  first  French  revolution.  Its  atrocities, 
through  the  violent  reaction  to  which  they  led,  served  to 
prop  up  every  existing  abuse,  by  rendering  whatever 
professed  to  be  the  cause  of  reform  suspected  and  unpop- 
ular. It  was  Robespierre  and  his  colleagues,  more  than 
any  set  of  men  the  world  ever  saw,  that  imparted  to  the 
cause  of  a  blind,  undisci'iminating  conservatism,"  not  merely 
the  character  of  sound  policy,  but  also  of  justice.  They 
arrayed  the  moral  sense  of  mankind  against  their  measures 
in  the  mass;  and  hence  many  an  antagonist  abuse  was 
suffered  to  exist,  which  would  otherwise  have  been  singled 
out  and  swept  away.     The  general  war,  too,  in  which  the 


58  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

revolution  terminated,  and  which  was  so  peculiarly  marked 
by  the  rise  of  one  of  the  greatest  military  despots  the 
world  ever  saw,  militated  against  the  progress  of  the  spe- 
cies, and  nowhere  more  powerfully  than  in  Britain.  The 
general  effect  of  the  first  Fi-ench  revolution  was  as  dis- 
astrous as  that  of  the  second  was  favorable.  But  what 
is  to  be  the  character  and  tendency  of  the  third  ?  We 
have  our  serious  misgivings  and  fears.  It  is  no  doubt 
well  for  our  country  that,  since  the  revolutionists  have 
been  successful,  Louis  Philipj^e  should  liave  been  so  deci- 
dedly in  the  wrong.  Had  he  fallen  five  yeai's  ago  by  an 
assassin,  and  had  Paris,  in  the  distraction  consequent  on 
the  event,  been  overmastered  by  the  mob,  the  case  would 
have  been  different ;  the  sympathies  of  the  British  people 
would  have  been  with  the  king  and  his  family ;  Toryism 
would  have  profited  in  consequence,  and  Tory  councils 
would  have  acquired  a  dangerous  ascendancy.  But  there 
will  be,  in  the  existing  state  of  the  case,  little  British 
sympathy  on  the  side  of  Louis  Philippe.  The  policy  of  the 
later  yeai's  of  his  reign  has  belied  the  promise  of  its  open- 
ing, and  he  falls  enveloped  in  the  weakness  inherent  in 
whatever  is  palpably  selfish  and  unjust.  Still  there  is 
much  cause  for  fear.  There  may  be  yet  a  reaction  in 
France  in  favor  of  wiser  heads  and  more  moderate  meas- 
ures ;  but,  for  the  pi*esent  at  least,  the  destinies  of  the 
country  and  the  peace  of  Europe  seem  to  be  in  the  hands 
of  an  unthinking  and  reckless  mob. 

To  what  are  we  to  attribute  the  singularly  mistaken 
policy  of  Louis  Philippe  during  the  last  few  years,  —  so 
unlike,  in  at  least  the  degree  of  sagacity  which  it  evinced, 
that  of  the  earlier  portion  of  his  reign  ?  "  Forget,"  said 
Napoleon,  "in  urging  one  of  his  generals  to  exert  all  the 
energy  of  his  more  vigorous  days,  —  "  forget  that  you  are 
fifty."  Has  the  ex-king  of  the  French  been  unable  io  for- 
get  that  he  is  considerably  turned  of  seventy  ?  Has  that 
peculiarly  solid  understanding  for  which  in  his  more  vig- 
orous years  the  man  was  so  remarkable,  been  gradually 


THE  THIRD  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.         59 

giving  way  during  the  last  few  years  of  his  life ;  and  are  we 
to  recognize  in  the  gross  imprudence — to  give  it  no  harsher 
name  —  which  led  to  the  present  catastrophe,  as  in  his 
shameless  attempts  to  aggrandize  his  family  in  Spain,  and 
his  homologation  as  national  of  the  revoltingly  unjust 
assault  on  Tahiti,  the  signs  of  a  decaying  intellect,  no 
longer  able  to  control,  as  formerly,  the  selfish  instincts  of 
his  nature,  constitutionally  very  strong?  And  is  this  wise 
and  brave  man  to  be  regarded  as  forming  one  illustrious 
example  more  of  that  class  of  the  wise  and  brave  so  well 
described  by  Johnson  ?  — 

"Ip.  life's  last  scene  what  prodigies  surprise!  — 
Fears  of  the  brave  and  follies  of  the  wise. 
From  Marlborongh's  eyes  the  streams  of  dotage  flow. 
And  Swift  expires  a  driveller  and  a  show." 

Certainly  the  latter  scenes  of  the  drama  of  his  reign,  to 
whatever  they  owe  their  peculiarity  of  character,  read  a 
fearful  lesson.  By  virtually  ceasing  to  be  —  what  the 
title  conferred  on  him  exclusively  recognized  —  "  King  of 
the  French,"  and  by  setting  himself,  on  the  e^e^e  princi- 
ples of  tlie  ancient  regime,  to  be  a  king  on  but  his  own 
behalf  and  that  of  his  family,  he  has  ceased  to  be  a  king  at 
all.  It  is  noticeable,  too,  that  he  should  have  fallen  a  vic- 
tim to  a  spirit  evoked,  indirectly  at  least,  by  that  second 
French  revolution  to  which  he  owed  his  throne.  Save 
for  that  revolution,  and  its  more  immediate  consequences, 
the  Anti-Corn-Law  League  of  Richard  Cobden  would 
have  been  altogether  an  impracticability,  even  in  Britain. 
It  was  in  order  to  prevent  any  such  quiet  but  jjowerful 
combination  of  the  British  merchants  from  thwarting  his 
plans  in  France,  that  the  monarch's  ill-judged  stand 
against  the  reform  banquet  was  so  uncompromisingly 
taken.  He  resolved  that  no  French  league  formed  on  the 
model  of  that  of  Britain  should  give  law  to  him  ;  and  to 
that  rash  determination  the  third  French  revolution  owea 
its  origin. 


60  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 


VIIL 

THE  DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON 

"  Tetjst  not,"  says  an  ancient  English  writer,  "  to  the 
haleness  of  an  old  man's  appearance,  however  stout  and 
hearty  he  seem.  He  is  a  goodly  tree,  but  hollow  within, 
and  decayed  at  the  roots,  and  ready  to  fall  with  the  first 
blast  of  wind."  The  country  has  received  a  startling  illus- 
tration of  that  enhanced  uncertninty  of  tenure  by  which 
men  hold  their  lives  when  they  have  passed  the  indicated 
term,  and  "  fallen  due  to  nature,"  in  the  death  of  one  of 
the  most  extraordinary  men  of  modern  times.  A  goodly 
but  ancient  tree  has  suddenly  yielded  to  internal  decay 
when  no  one  looked  for  its  fall  ;  and  the  echoes  of  the 
unexpected  crash  resound  mournfully,  far  and  wide,  through 
the  forest.  The  consideration  will,  we  are  afraid,  form 
but  a  doubtful  solace  to  Britons  of  the  present  genei-ation, 
that  they  will  scai'ce  again  witness  the  fall  of  aught  so 
goodly  or  so  great. 

The  Duke  of  Wellington  was  the  last,  and  at  least  one 
of  the  greatest,  of  that  group  of  men  whose  histories  we 
find  specially  connected  with  the  history  of  the  first  French 
revolution.  He  pertained  to  a  type  of  man  so  rare  that 
we  can  enumerate  only  two  other  examples  in  the  great 
Teutonic  family  to  which  he  belonged,  —  George  "Washing- 
ton and  Oliver  Cromwell.  Of  spare  and  meagre  imagi- 
nation, and  of  intellect  not  at  all  cast  in  the  literary  or 
oratoric.-il  mould,  they  yet  excelled  all  their  fellows  in  the 
possession  of  a  gigantic  common  sense,  —  rarer,  we  had 
almost  said,  than  genius  itself,  but  which,  in  truth,  consti- 
tuted genius  of  a  homely  and  peculiar,  but  not  the  less  high 
order,  and  which  better  fitted  them  to  be  leaders  of  men 


THE   DUKE    OF   -WELLINGTON.  61 

than  the  more  bi-illiant  and  versatile  genius  of  a  Shak- 
peare  or  of  a  Milton  would  have  done.  The  ability  of 
seeing  what  in  all  circumstances  was  best  to  be  done,  and 
an  indomitable  resolution  and  power  of  will  which  enabled 
them  to  do  it,  constituted  the  peculiar  faculties  in  which 
they  surpassed  all  their  contemporaries.  With  more  im- 
agination they  would  have  perhaps  attempted  more,  and, 
in  consequence,  have  accomplished  less.  Napoleon  pos- 
sessed powers  which  in  Cromwell,  or  in  Napoleon's  great 
rival  and  ultimate  conqueror  the  Duke,  had  no  place. 
Neither  the  Lord  Protector  nor  Wellington  could  have 
gloated  over  the  overwrought  sentiment  and  vivid  de- 
scription of  an  Ossian  ;  nor  yet  could  they  have  entranced, 
by  their  extempore  tales,  brilliant  parties  of  thoroughly 
,  cultivated  taste,  and  familiar  with  the  best  literary  models 
of  the  age.  But  then,  neither  Cromwell  nor  the  Duke 
would  have  sealed  their  ruin  by  a  Russian  campaign.  Had 
the  Lord  Protector  been  in  Napoleon's  place,  misled  by  no 
high  imaginings,  and  infinitely  less  selfish  than  his  great 
antitype,  he  would  have  restored  their  ancient  indepen- 
dence to  the  Poles,  erected  their  kingdom  into  a  powerful 
barrier  against  the  Czar,  taken  his  revenge  on  Russia,  not 
by  attempting  to  dictate  to  it  from  its  ancient  capital, 
but  by  undoing  all  that  Peter  the  Great  had  done,  and 
shutting  it  up  from  the  rest  of  Europe.  Whatever  he  at- 
tempted he  would  have  performed ;  and,  instead  of  dying 
in  exile,  a  solitary  prisoner  at  St.  Helena,  he  would  have 
expired  at  Paris,  Emperor  of  the  French,  and  his  son  would 
have  quietly  succeeded  him.  The  three  great  military 
doers  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  were  all  alike  remarkable  for 
their  sobriety  of  mind  and  spareness  of  imagination,  and  for 
exactly  knowing  —  much  in  consequence  of  that  sobriety 
anl  of  that  spareness  —  what  could  and  what  could  not 
bo  accomplished.  And  so,  unlike  many  of  the  great  men 
of  antiquity,  or  of  the  more  volatile  races  of  the  world  in 
modern  times,  they  rose  to  eminence  and  glory  by  com- 
paratively slow  degrees,  and  finished  their  course  without 
6 


62  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

experiencing  great  reverses.  There  is  a  still  rarer  type  of 
greatness,  of"  which  the  entire  history  of  man  furnishes 
only  some  one  or  two  examples,  in  which  the  imagination 
was  vigorous,  but  the  judgment  fully  adequate  to  restrain 
and  control  it ;  and  we  would  instance  Julius  Cjesar  as  one 
of  these.  By  far  the  greatest  man  of  action  of  the  age  in 
which  he  lived,  he  was  also  one  of  the  greatest  of  its  orators 
—  second,  indeed,  only  to  perhaps  the  greatest  orator  the 
world  ever  saw ;  while  as  an  author  his  work  takes  its 
place  in  literature  as  one  of  the  ever-enduring  classics.  By 
the  way,  has  the  reader  ever  remarked  how  thoroughly  the 
features  of  Wellington,  Washington,  and  Cajsar  were  cast 
in  one  type  ?  Had  they  all  been  brethren,  the  family  like- 
ness could  not  have  been  more  strong.  There  is  the  same 
firm,  hard,  mathematiccd  cast  of  face,  the  same  thin  cheeks 
and  pi'ominent  cheek-bones,  the  same  sharply-defined 
nether  jaws,  the  same  bold  nose,  —  in  each  case  an  indented 
aqutline,  —  and  the  same  quietly  keen  eye.  And  in  the 
countenance  of  Cromwell,  though  more  overcharged,  as 
perhaps  became  his  larger  sti-ucture  of  bone  and  more  mas- 
culine frame,  we  find  exactly  the  lineaments,  united  to  a 
massiveness  of  forehead  possessed  by  neither  Washington 
nor  Wellington,  and  only  equally  by  that  of  Ca3sar.  Cha- 
teaubriand's graphic  summary  of  the  character  of  the  Pro- 
tector is  in  singular  harmony  with  his  physiognomy.  "  To 
whom  among  us,"  he  says,  in  drawing  a  parallel  between 
the  first  French  revolution  and  that  which  in  England  led 
to  the  execution  of  Charles,  "  can  we  compare  Cromwell, 
who  concealed  under  a  coarse  exterior  all  that  is  great  in 
human  nature,  —  a  rnan  who  was  profound,  vast,  and  secret 
as  an  abyss,  —  who  hid  in  his  soul  the  ambition  of  a  CaBsar, 
and  hid  it  in  so  superior  a  manner,  that  not  one  of  his  col- 
leagues, except  Hampden,  could  dive  into  his  thoughts 
and  views?" 

Wellington,  like  the  other  great  men  with  whose  names 
we  associate  his,  was  remarkable  for  seeing,  in  his  own 
especial  province,  what  even  the  ablest  aild  shrewdest  of 


THE   DUKE   OF   WELLINGTON.  63 

his  contemporaries  could  not  see.  Jeffrey  and  Brougham 
were  both  able  men,  talkers  of  the  first  water,  and,  even 
as  judges  and  reviewers,  not  beneath  the  highest  average 
found  among  men ;  and  yet  we  have  but  to  take  up  those 
earlier  numbers  of  the  "  Edinburgh  Review,"  in  which 
these  accomplished  judicial  critics  discussed  the  Peninsula 
campaigns,  to  find  how  utterly  ignorant  they  both  were  — 
and,  with  thom,  all  the  party  which  they  represented  — 
of  that  simple  but  really  great  idea  which  formed  the  basis 
01  Wellington's  operations,  and  which  ultimately  led  him 
u>  /esuits  iso  brilliant  and  successful.  Nor  was  the  medio- 
cre ministry  of  the  day,  ibough  they  lent  him  from  time  to 
time  their  driblets  of  support,  at  first  most  meagrely  and 
unwillingly,  until  compelled  to  liberality  by  his  successes, 
less  in  the  dark  regarding  it  than  their  opponents.  Once  and 
again  unable  to  make  out  a  case  for  him,  and  gravelled  by 
what  seemed  the  unanswerable  arguments  of  their  antag- 
onists, they  had  to  throw  the>  entire  responsibility  on  their 
indomitable  general ;  and  ^^'ellington  was  content  to  bear 
it.  Nor  was  it  in  the  least  wonderful  that  they  should 
have  found  the  case  of  the  Poninsula  a  peculiarly  hard  one. 
Appearances,  as  all  ordinary,  a^d  even  almost  all  superior 
observers,  were  able  to  remark  them,  seemed  sadly  against 
the  British.  The  brilliancy  oi  Napoleon's  military  tactics 
—  above  all  his  splendid  powers  of  combination  —  had 
astonished  the  world.  His  m«rshals  had  learned  in  his 
school  almost  to  rival  himself;  they  were,  besides,  under 
his  direct  guidance  ;  and  they  had  thi'ee  hundred  thousand 
French  soldiers  in  the  Peninsula.  The  British  there  at  no 
time  amounted  to  sixty  thousand.  They  had  allies,  it  is 
true,  in  the  Portuguese  and  Spaniards,  but  allies  on  which 
they  could  reckon  but  little ;  aud  yet,  such  was  the  appar- 
ently inadequate  force  with  which  Wellington  ha:l  deter- 
mined to  clear  the  Peninsula.  What  could  the  man  mean  ? 
Was  he  possessed  of  the  vulgar  belief  that  "  one  English- 
man is  a  match  for  five  Frenchmen  at  anytime?"  No: 
Wellington  was  perfectly  sober-minded ;  and  with  a  confi- 


64  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

dence  in  the  native  prowess  of  the  well-disciplined  Briton 
such  as  that  which  Nelson  possessed,  —  a  confidence  that, 
if  opposed,  man  to  man,  on  equal  terms  of  position  and 
weapons,  the  Englishman  would  beat  the  Frenchman,  just 
as  a  stronger  mechanical  force  bears  down  a  weaker, — 
he  was  particularly  chary  of  risking  his  men  against  over- 
powering odds.  On  what,  then,  was  his  confidence  founded  ? 
He  saw  better  than  any  one  else  the  true  circumstances  of 
the  Peninsuhi,  and  the  true  difficulties  of  the  French. 
Spain,  and  especially  Portugal,  had  their  strongly  defen- 
sible lines,  which  a  weaker  force,  if  through  neglect  it  gave 
the  enemy  no  undue  advantage,  and  if  liberally  supplied 
with  the  munitions  of  war,  might  defend  forever  against  a 
stronger.  The  successes  of  the  British  navy  under  Nelson 
had  given  it  the  complete  command  of  the  sea ;  and  sg  to 
a  British  army  these  indispensable  munitions  could  be 
supplied.  On  the  other  hand,  the  base-line  from  which 
the  French  had  to  carry  on  their  operations  was  distant. 
The  wild  Pyrenees,  and  with  them  wide  tracts  of  rough 
and  hostile  country,  stretched  between  the  French  armies 
and  their  native  France.  They  could  not  be  supported  in 
consequence  by  munitions  drawn  from  their  own  country; 
and  the  hostile  country  in  which  they  encamped  was  by 
much  too  poor  to  enable  them  to  realize  that  part  of  Napo- 
leon's policy  through  which  he  made  hostile  countries 
support  the  war  which  wasted  them,  and  to  which  he  had 
given  such  effect  on  the  fertile  plains  of  Germany.  Spain 
could  not  support  great  armies ;  and  so  great  combinations 
could  be  maintained  within  its  territories  for  only  a  few 
days  at  a  time,  and  then  fall  apart  again.  Wellington, 
from  behind  his  lines,  marched  out  now  upon  one  separate 
army,  anon  upon  another ;  now  upon  one  strong  fortress, 
anon  upon  another;  never  opposed  himself  to  overpower- 
ing odds;  and,  when  the  odds  were  not  overpowering,  or  the 
fortress  not  impregnable,. always  carried  the  siege  or  gained 
the  battle.  He  broke  up  in  detail  the  armies  of  France. 
When  they  effected  one  of  their  great  combinations  against 


THE   DUKE   OP   WELLINGTON.  65 

him,  he  fell  coolly  back  on  his  lines ;  sometimes,  as  he  saw 
opportunity,  stopping  by  the  way,  as  at  Busaco,  to  gain  a 
battle,  and  to  convince  the  enemy  that  he  was  merely 
retreating,  not  running  away.  And  then,  when  the  com- 
bination fell  to  pieces,  as  fall  to  pieces  he  saw  it  could  not 
fail,  he  again  began  to  beat  piecemeal  the  armies  of  which 
it  had  been  composed.  Time  after  time  were  the  best- 
troops  of  France  poured  across  the  Pyrenees  to  bear  down 
the  modern  Fabius,  and  time  after  time  did  they  sink  under 
the  peculiar  difficulties  of  their  circumstances  and  the 
tactics  of  Wellington.  At  length  a  day  came  when  France 
could  spare  no  more  troops  to  the  Peninsula;  all  its  armies 
were  required  for  tlie  defence  of  its  northern  frontier,  for 
the  army  of  Napoleon  had  been  broken  in  his  disastrous 
Russian  campaign,  and  the  allies  were  pressing  upon  their 
lines.  And  then  Wellington,  taking  off  his  hat,  and  rising 
in  his  stirrups,  —  for  he  saw  that  his  time  had  at  length 
come,  —  bade  farewell  to  Portugal.  He  broke  the  power 
of  the  French  in  Spain  in  one  great  battle ;  repressed  and 
beat  back  Soult,  who  had  rushed  across  the  Pyi*enees  to 
oppose  him ;  and  finally  terminated  the  war  at  Toulouse, 
far  within  the  frontiers  of  France.  He  had  wrought 
out  his  apparently  unsolvable  problem  by  sweeping  the 
Peninsula  of  three  hundred  thousand  French  troops  that 
had  held  it;  and,  though  once  so  inexplicable,  it  now 
seems  in  the  main  an  exceedingly  simple  problem  after  all. 
But  Christopher  Columbus  was  the  only  man  in  a  certain 
company  who  could  make  an  egg  stand  on  eijd  ;  and  the 
only  man  of  the  age  who  could  have  swept  out  of  Spain, 
with  his  handful  of  troops,  the  three  hundred  thousand 
Frenchmen,  was  Arthur  Wellesley.  At  least  none  of  the 
others  who  attempted  the  feat  —  including  even  Sir  John 
Moore  —  had  got  any  hold  whatever  of  the  master  idea 
through  which  it  was  done ;  and  we  know  that  some  of 
our  ablest  men  at  home  held  that  there  was  no  master  idea 
in  the  case,  and  that  the  feat  was  wholly  impracticable- 
As  a  statesman,  the  Duke  of  Wellington  held  a  consid- 
6* 


66  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

erably  lower  place  than  as  a  warrior.  With  bodies  of  men 
regarded  simply  as  physical  forces,  no  man  could  deal  more 
skilfully ;  with  bodies  of  men  regarded  as  combinations 
of  faculties,  rational  and  intellectual,  he  frequently  failed. 
He  could  calculate  to  a  nicety  on  the  power  of  an  armed 
battalion,  but  much  less  nicely  on  the  power  of  an  armed 
opinion.  And  all  the  graver  mistakes  of  his  career  we  find 
in  this  latter  department.  Latterly  he  is  said  to  have 
taken,  sensible  of  his  own  defect,  his  opinions  and  judg- 
ments in  this  walk  from  the  late  Sir  Robert  Peel ;  and  it 
has  been  frequently  stated  that  he  intermeddled  but  little 
with  politics  since  the  death  of  his  adviser  and  friend. 
But,  though  immeasurably  inferior  in  this  department  to 
Cromwell,  and  even  to  Washington,  —  for  to  these  great 
men  pertains  the  praise  of  having  been  not  only  warriors,  but 
also  statesmen,  of  the  first  class,  —  few  indeed  of  the  coun- 
trymen, and  scarce  any  of  the  party,  of  the  deceased  Duke 
equalled  him  in  the  shrewdness  of  the  judgments  which 
he  ultimately  came  to  form  on  the  questions  brought  before 
him.  Even  some  of  his  sayings,  spoken  in  bootless  oppo- 
sition, and  regarded  at  the  time  as  mere  instances  of  the 
testiness  natural  to  a  period  of  life  considerably  advanced, 
have  had  shrewd  comments  read  upon  them  by  the  subse- 
quent course  of  events.  It  seemed  to  be  in  mere  fretful- 
ness  that  he  remarked,  a  good  many  years  since,  in  opposi- 
tion to  some  new  scheme  for  extending  the  popular  power, 
that  he  saw  not  how  in  such  circumstances  "the  Queen's 
Government  could  be  carried  on."  But  that  strange 
balance  of  parties  in  the  country  which  leaves  at  present 
scai'ce  any  preponderating  power  on  any  side  to  operate 
as  the  moving  force  of  "  the  Executive,"  has,  we  dare  say, 
led  many  to  think  that  the  old  man  saw  more  clearly  at 
the  time  than  most  of  his  critics  or  opponents.  Though 
of  an  indomitable  will,  too,  he  was  in  reality  too  strong- 
minded  a  man  to  be  an  obstinate  one.  He  could  yield ; 
and  the  part  which  he  took  in  emancipating  the  Roman 
Catholics,  and  in  abolishing  the  corn  laws,  are  evidences 


THE   DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON.  67 

of  the  fact.  Further,  it  is  not  unimportant  to  know  that 
had  the  advice  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  been  acted  upon 
in  our  ecclesiastical  controversy,  no  disruption  would  have 
taken  place  in  the  Scottish  Church,  and  the  Scottish 
Establishment  would  have  survived  in  all  its  integrity,  as 
the  strongest  in  Britain.  Wellington's  ability  of  yielding 
more  readily  was  based  on  his  ability  of  seeing  more 
clearly  than  most  of  the  other  members  of  his  party  ;  they 
resembled  the  captains  of  Captain  Sword,  in  Hunt's  well- 
known  poem;  but  he  was  the  great  Captain  Sword  him- 
self When  the  ]>eaceable  Captain  Pen  threatens  to  bring 
a  "world  of  men"  at  his  back,  and  to  disai'm  the  old 
warrior,  the  poet  tells  us  that  — 

"  Out  laughed  the  captains  of  Captain  Sword, 
But  their  chief  looked  vexed,  and  said  not  a  word; 
For  thought  and  trouble  had  touched  his  ears, 
Beyond  the  bnllet-llke  sense  of  theirs; 
And  wherever  he  went  he  was^ware  of  a  sound. 
Now  heard  in  the  distance,  now  gathering  round. 
Which  irked  him  to  know  what  the  issue  might  be. 
For  the  soul  of  the  cause  of  it  well  guessed  he." 

In  his  moral  character  the  Duke  was  eminently  an  honest 
and  truthful  man,  —  one  of  the  most  devoted  and  loyal  of 
subjects,  and  one  of  the  most  patriotic  of  citizens.  His 
name  has  been  often  coupled  with  that  of  the  great  mili- 
tary captain  of  England  in  the  last  century,  —  Marborough; 
but,  save  in  the  one  item  of  great  military  ability,  they  had 
nothing  in  common.  Wellington  was  frank  to  a  fault. 
One  of  the  gravest  blunders  of  his  political  life,  his  open 
declaration  in  Parliament  that  the  country's  system  of 
representation  possessed  the  country's  full  and  entire  con- 
fidence, and  that  he  would  resist  any  measure  of  reform 
BO  long  as  he  held  any  station  in  the  Government,  was 
certainly  cgregiously  impolitic ;  but  who  can  deny  that  it 
was  candid  and  fi-ank  ?  Marlborough,  on  the  other  hand, 
was  one  of  the  most  tortuous  and  secret  of  men.     Welling- 


68  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

ton  was  emphatically  truthful;  Marlborough  a  consummate 
liar.  Wellington  would  have  laid  down  life  and  property 
in  the  cause  of  his  sovereign  ;  Marlborough  was  one  of 
the  first  egregiously  to  deceive  and  betray  his  royal  master, 
who,  however  great  his  faults  and  errors,  was  at  least  ever 
kind  to  him.  Wellington  was,  in  fine,  a  thoroughly  honest 
man ;  Marlborough,  a  brilliant  scoundrel. 

There  seemed  to  be  but  little  of  the  soft  green  of  hu- 
manity about  the  recently  departed  wanior.  He  was,  in 
appearance  at  least,  a  hard  man,  who  always  did  his  own 
duty,  and  exacted  from  others  the  full  tale  of  theirs.  He 
had  seen,  too,  in  his  first  and  only  disastrous  campaign,  — 
that  of  the  Duke  of  York  in  the  Netherlands,  —  the  direful 
effects  of  unrestrained  license  in  an  array.  Enraged  by 
numerous  petty  acts  of  violence  and  plunder,  the  people 
of  the  country  became  at  length  undisguisedly  hostile  to 
their  nominal  allies,  and  greatly  enhanced  the  dangers  and 
difficulties  of  their  frequent  retreats.  And  Wellington, 
taught,  it  is  said,  by  the  lesson,  was  ever  after  a  stern  dis- 
ciplinaj'ian,  and  visited  at  times  with  what  was  deemed 
undue  severity  the  liberties  taken  by  his  soldiery  with 
the  property  of  an  allied  people.  And  so  he  possessed 
much  less  of  the  love  of  the  men  who  served  under  him 
than  not  only  the  weaker  but  tender-hearted  Nelson,  but 
than  also  the  genial  and  good-humored  Duke  of  York,  — 
a  prince  whom  no  soldier  ever  trusted  as  a  general,  or 
ever  disliked  as  a  man.  But  never  did  general  possess 
more  thoroughly  the  confidence  of  his  soldiers  tlian  Wel- 
lington. Wherever  he  led,  they  were  prepared  to  follow. 
We  have  been  told  by  an  old  campaigner,  who  had  fought 
under  him  in  one  of  our  Highland  regiments  in  all  the 
battles  of  the  Peninsula,  that  on  one  occasion,  in  a  retreat, 
the  corps  to  which  he  belonged  had  been  left  far  behind 
in  the  rear  of  their  fellows,  and  began  to  express  some 
anxiety  regarding  the  near  proximity  of  the  enemy.  "  I 
wish,"  said  one,  "  I  saw  ten  thousand  of  our  countryfolk 
beside  us."   "  I  wish,  rather,"  rejoined  aaother,  "that  I  saw 


THE   DUKE   OF   WELLINGTON.  09 

the  long  nose  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington."  A  few  min- 
utes after,  however,  the  Duke  was  actually  seen  riding 
past,  and  from  that  moment  confidence  was  restored  in 
the  regiment.  They  felt  that  the  eye  of  Wellington  was 
upon  them,  and  that  all  was  necessarily  right.  Nor, 
with  all  his  seeming  hardness,  was  Wellington  in  any 
degree  a  cruel  or  inhuinan  man.  He  was,  on  the  contrary, 
essentially  kind  and  benevolent.  The  same  old  cam- 
paigner to  whom  we  owe  the  anecdote,  —  a  gallant  and 
kind-hearted,  but,  like  many  soldiers,  thoughtless  man, — 
had,  notwithstanding  a  tolerably  adequate  income  for  his 
condition,  fallen  into  straits  ;  and  he  at  length  bethought 
him,  in  his  difficulties,  of  availing  himself  of  that  arrange- 
ment made  by  the  Whigs  about  twenty  years  ago,  when 
they  first  came  into  office,  thixjugh  which  he  might  sell 
his  pension.  The  proposed  terms,  however,  were  hard ; 
and  poor  Johnston,  wholly  unconscious  of  the  politics  of 
the  day,  wrote  to  his  old  general,  to  see  whether  he  could 
not  procure  for  him  better  ones  from  his  Majesty's  minis- 
ters, recounting,  in  his  letter,  his  services  and  his  wounds, 
and  stating  that  it  was  his  intention,  with  the  money 
which  he  was  desirous  of  raising,  to  emigrate  to  British 
America.  And  prompt  by  return  of  post  came  the  Duke's 
reply,  written  in  the  Duke's  own  hand.  Never  was  there 
sounder  advice  more  briefly  expressed.  "  The  Duke  of 
Wellington,"  said  his  Grace,  "  has  received  William  John- 
ston's letter ;  and  he  earnestly  recommends  him,  first,  not 
to  seek  for  a  provision  in  the  colonies  of  North  America, 
if  he  be  not  able-bodied,  and  in  a  situation  to  provide  for 
himself  in  circumstances  of  extreme  difficulty  ;  secondly, 
not  to  sell  or  mortgage  his  pension.  The  Duke  of  'Wel- 
lington has  no  relation  whatever  with  the  Kinfs  ministers. 
He  recommends  William  Johnston  to  apply  to  the  adju- 
tant-general of  the  army.  (London,  March  7th,  1832.)" 
The  old  pensioner  did  not  take  the  Duke's  advice ;  for  he 
did  sell  his  pension,  and,  though,  in  consequence  of  his 
wounds,  not  very  able-bodied,  he  did  emigrate  to  America, 


70  HISTORTCAL  AND  BIOGRAPHICAL. 

and,  we  fear,  suffered  in  consequence ;  but  it  was  not  the 
less  true  humanity  on  the  part  of  his  Grace  to  counsel  so 
promptly  and  so  wisely  the  poor  humble  soldier.  But, 
alas !  his  last  advice  has  been  given,  and  his  last  account 
rendered ;  and  it  will  be  well  for  our  country  should  the 
sovereign  never  miss  his  honored  voice  at  the  Council 
Board,  nor  —  to  borrow  from  ancient  story  —  the  soldier 
ever  "  vehemently  desire  him  in  the  day  of  battle." 


IX. 

EARL  GRET. 

Ok  Saturday  last,  the  body  of  Charles,  Earl  Grey,  waa 
committed  to  the  tomb  of  his  ancestors ;  and  his  lordship's 
existence  in  relation  to  the  present  scene  of  being  ranks 
but  among  the  things  that  were.  His  political  life  extends 
over  the  long  term  of  sixty  years.  Its  beginnings  pertain 
to  the  annals  of  the  last  age.  History  has  long  since  pro- 
nounced judgment  on  the  illustrious  group  of  his  earlier 
friends  and  opponents,  —  on  Pitt  and  Fox  and  Burke, 
Windham,  Sheridan,  Erekine,  and  Dundas,  —  and  the  por- 
tion of  our  literature  in  which  they  are  celebrated,  or  which 
we  owe  to  them,  is  a  literature  that  has  descended  to  us 
from  our  fathers.  Were  William  Pitt  still  living,  he  would 
be  but  four  years  older  than  the  late  Earl  Grey.  It  may 
seem  fanciful ;  but  the  prolonged  existence  of  this  veteran 
statesman,  so  influential  in  the  councils  of  his  country  at 
a  period  when  his  years  had  well-nigh  reached  the  full 
tale  indicated  by  the  psalmist,  taken  in  connection  with 
the  imperishable  associations  of  his  early  history,  has  served 
to  I'emind  us  of  what  we  have  sometimes  witnessed  beside 
the  waters  of  a  petrifying  spring  ;  we  have  seen  tufts  of 


EARL   GREY.  71 

vegetation,  with  their  upper  sprigs  green  and  flourishing, 
and  the  lower  converted  into  solid  stone  ;  the  vital  influ- 
ences vigorous  in  the  newer  portion  of  the  plant,  while  the 
oldo*  were  imperishably  fixed  in  marble. 

There  are  various  deeply-interesting  aspects  in  which  tlie 
political  career  of  his  lordship  may  be  viewed.  When  he 
first  entered  public  life,  the  dissolute  court  and  infidel 
literature  of  France  were  busily  engaged  in  sowing  the 
seeds  which  germinated  and  bore  fruit  as  the  first  French 
revolution.  It  was  a  gay  winter  in  Paris,  that  of  1786, 
when  the  Earl  —  then  Mr.  Grey  —  was  first  returned  to 
Parliament  for  his  nati-ve  county,  Northumberland.  The 
Chevalier  de  Boufflers  was  engaged  in  making  charming 
songs  on  the' new  fashions  ;  the  Queen  had  just  pensioned 
her  milliner,  and  had  got  nine  hundred  thousand  livres  of 
the  public  money  to  pay  some  of  her  own  "  small  debts  ;  " 
the  courtiers,  who  had  been  inconsolable  for  some  time,  — 
for  the  most  accomplished  opera  dancer  in  the  world  had 
sprained  her  ankle,  —  had  recovered  their  spirits  again,  for 
the  ankle  had  also  recovered ;  and,  though  thousands  of 
the  industrious  poor  were  starving,  and  speaking  omin- 
ously, in  their  distress,  of  America  and  its  revolution,  and 
though  even  the  ladies  had  begun  to  wear  bonnets  a  la 
Rodney^  no  one  could  see  how  trifles  such  as  these  should 
bear  with  sinister  effect  on  the  general  hilarity.  Nor 
could  the  young  representative  of  Northumberland  have 
possibly  seen  aught  in  them  with  which  he,  as  a  public 
man,  had  anything  to  do.  Nothing  more  certain,  however, 
than  that  the  emphatically  important  portion  of  the  his- 
tory of  Earl  Grey  which  so  peculiarly  belongs  to  that  of 
his  country  is  entwined  with  the  history  of  France.  We 
could  not  better  illustrate  the  influence  which,  in  these 
times  of  advanced  civilization,  the  destinies  of  one  great 
European  country  exert  on  those  of  another,  than  by 
instancing  what  his  lordship  at  one  period  of  his  life  at- 
tempted, but  signally  failed  to  perform,  and  so  completely 
accomplished  at  another.    The  special  work  of  the  life  of 


^ 


72  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

Earl  Grey  —  that  which  now  gives  hiin  a  distinguished 
niche  in  British  history  —  was  the  work  of  parliamentary 
reform.  In  1793  he  first  introduced  into  Parliament  his 
celebrated  motion  on  this  subject,  and  found,  in  a  house  of 
two  hundred  and  twenty-three  members,  only  forty-one 
supporters.  The  revolutionary  tornado  in  France  had 
reached  its  extreme  height  at  the  time,  and  had  prostrated, 
in  its  fury,  the  king,  the  aristocracy,  and  the  church; 
French  principles  were  spreading  among  ourselves  ;  some 
of  the  more  infidel  writings  of  Paine  had  just  appeared, 
and  were  circulating  among  the  people  by  thousands  and 
tens  of  thousands  ;  many  of  the  more  timid  Whigs, 
alarmed  at  the  very  appearance  of  change,  hung  back  from 
their  old  allies ;  with  this  timid  class  the  great  bulk  of  the 
more  Bober  portion  of  the  British  people  made  common 
cause ;  and  so  the  motion  of  Earl  Grey  was  negatived  by 
a  majority  that  served  not  only  to  extinguish  the  measure 
for  the  time,  but  to  leave  scarce  any  hope  of  its  ultimate 
success.  The  terrible  storm  raised  in  France  blew  full 
against  it,  and  bore  it  down  ;  and  it  was  not  until  a  more 
salutary  storm  arose  in  the  same  country  nearly  forty 
years  after,  that  it  fairly  righted  again,  and,  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  now  auspicious  gale,  bore  into  harbor.  His 
lordship  held  the  helm  in  both  cases  ;  and  the  tempest  that 
so  signally  baffled  him  in  the  one,  and  the  gale  that  carried 
his  bark  so  directly  into  port  in  the  other,  blew  from  off 
the  same  land. 

When  Earl  Grey  introduced  into  the  House  his  first 
unsuccessful  motion  for  parliamentary  reform,  he  was  in 
his  twenty-ninth  year.  Thirty-eight  years  passed  ere  he 
originated  the  motion  on  the  subject  which  was  to  be 
ultimately  successful,  and  he  was  now  in  his  sixty-seventh. 
In  the  long  intervening  period,  the  change  so  common  to 
the  mind  of  man,  which  modifies  the  Whiggism  natural 
to  youth  into  the  semi-Toryism  natural  to  age,  seems  to 
have  taken  place  to  some  extent  in  the  mind  of  Earl  Grey ; 
and  his  second  measure  was  much  less  sweeping  and  ex- 


EARL   GREY.  7u 

tensive  than  liis  first.  The  first  was  based  on  the  principle 
of  household  suffrage,  and  involved  a  return  to  the  origi- 
nal scheme  of  triennial  parliaments.  The  means,  too, 
which  he  originated  to  give  the  cause  a  popularity  and 
strength  outside  the  walls  of  Parliament  that  might  find 
it  favor  and  secure  it  attention  within,  partook  of  a  bold- 
ness characteristic  of  an  early  stage  of  vigorous  and  san- 
guine manhood.  He  took  a  prominent  part  in  the  form- 
ation of  the  "Association  of  Friends  of  the  People,"  with 
associates  such  as  Whitbread,  Erskine,  Cartwright,  and 
Macintosh,  —  men  almost  all  of  whom  lived  long  enough 
considerably  to  modify  their  views  ;  and  it  was  in  the 
character  of  the  leading  organ  of  this  body  in  the  House 
of  Commons  that  he  brought  forward  his  first  motion  on 
reform.  There  were,  however,  some  few  points  in  which 
his  earlier  scheme  excelled  that  which  he  lived  to  transfer 
to  the  statute-book  as  part  and  parcel  of  the  Constitution 
of  the  country.  It  gave  single  votes  to  individual  elec- 
tors, and  single  votes  only  ;  and  provided  that  the  elec- 
tions, on  a  dissolution  of  Parliament,  should  take  place 
simultaneously  all  over  the  empire.  In  order  rightly  to 
estimate  the  value  of  these  provisions,  we  have  but  to  look 
at  what  is  perhaps  the  greatest  defect,  both  in  principle 
and  practice,  in  the  scheme  of  parliamentary  reform  which 
he  afterwards  carried.  A  single  individual  may  at  the  pres- 
ent moment  hold  votes  in  at  once  every  represented  county 
in  Scotland,  and  in  every  burgh  or  district  of  burghs  that 
returns  a  member.  On  this  principle,  it  is  not  the  hold- 
ers of  property  that  vote,  —  property  being  regarded,  as 
it  ought,  as  a  mere  qualification  that  fixes  the  status  of 
tlie  individual  and  establishes  his  stake  in  the  country,  — 
but  the  property  itself  It  is  the  voice  of  the  house,  field, 
or  farm  that  votes,  —  the  same  voice  serving  for  several 
houses,  fields,  or  farms, — just  as  the  same  voice  in  a 
puppet-show  serves  for  Punch,  Judy,  and  the  Constable. 
And  thus  it  is  not  men,  but  things,  that  select  the  law- 
makers of  the  country.  Such  seems  to  be  the  objection, 
7 


74  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

in  point  of  principle,  to  a  provision  in  Earl  Grey's  second 
Bcherae  of  reform,  which  his  first  scheme  repudiated  ;  and 
in  practice  we  find  this  provision  more  objectionable  still. 
It  forms  the  basis  of  the  whole  corrupt  machinery  of 
fictitious  votes,  and  these,  in  turn,  the  support  of  not  a 
little  of  the  profligacy  in  public  life  that  can  indulge  in 
the  eye  of  day  in  its  true  colors,  despising  the  wholesome 
restraints  of  general  opinion,  because  altogether  indepen- 
dent of  them.  It  is  at  once  a  copious  source  of  corruption 
among  the  representatives  of  the  country,  and  of  legalized 
perjuries  among  the  represented.  We  know  of  no  defect 
in  the  measure  at  all  deserving  of  being  placed  in  the 
same  class  with  this  grand  one,  save,  perhaps,  the  provi- 
sion that  extends  the  political  franchise  to  tenants-at-will. 
Legislation  cannot  give  independence  to  the  mind  of  a 
voter  ;  but  it  should  at  least  provide,  in  every  possible 
case,  that  independence  should  be  communicated  to  his 
circumstances. 

There  is  another  interesting  point  illustrated  by  the 
long  political  life  of  Earl  Grey.  His  lordship  was  un- 
questionably a  very  able  man,  but  he  did  not  possess  one 
of  those  gigantic  minds  which  mould  and  fashion  the 
destinies  of  nations.  He  resembled  rather  an  index-hand 
attached  to  the  great  political  machine,  than  its  moving 
power.  No  one  can  say  how  the  civil  war  would  have 
terminated  in  England  in  the  seventeenth  century  had  there 
been  no  Cromwell,  or  what  complexion  the  present  poli- 
tics of  France  and  the  Continent  generally  would  wear 
had  there  been  no  Napoleon.  Had  the  one  great  man 
never  been  called  into  existence,  it  is  probable  that  on  the 
death  of  Hampden  prerogative  would  have  triumphed, 
and  Britain  have  sunk  to  the  level  of  the  contemporary 
despotisms  of  the  Continent.  It  is  possible  that,  had  the 
other  great  man  never  lived,  an  allied  army  would  have 
marched  to  Paris  ere  the  present  century  began,  and  that 
humbled  France,  restored  to  the  despotic  sway  of  the 
Bourbons,  and  with  no  proud  recollections  of  victory  to 


EARL   GREY.  75 

reinvigorale  her,  would  have  witnessed  no  second  revolu- 
tion. Cromwell  and  Napoleon  belonged  to  the  class  of 
men  to  whonx  the  destinies  of  their  age  seem  intrusted ; 
but  in  the  career  of  Earl  Grey  we  see  rather  the  move- 
ments of  an  intelligent  index  of  the  course  of  things  than 
the  operations  of  a  power  originating  and  setting  them  in 
motion.  And  hence  an  interest  of  a  particular  kind  in 
contemplating  his  history.  We  see  in  it  the  growth  of 
popular  opinion,  like  that  of  vegetation  in  a  backward 
spring,  now  shooting  forth  in  green  vigor,  now  checked 
and  prostrated  by  the  chilling  influence  of  great  political 
storms,  now  yet  again  recovering  itself,  now  again  thrown 
back,  and  finally  reaching,  in  the  decline  of  the  year,  a  late 
and  somewhat  blighted  maturity.  First  come  the  terrors 
of  the  French  Revolution  ;  then  the  untoward  influences 
of  the  long  French  war  ;  then  an  intermediate  period,  in 
which  the  power  acquired  during  the  tw6  previous  seasons 
by  the  antagonists  of  all  political  change  is  employed  in 
depressing  their  opponents ;  and  then,  when  opinion, 
long  cherished  in  its  growth,  and  often  thrown  back,  has 
arrived  at  the  necessary  degree  of  ripeness,  a  reaping-time 
arrives,  and  Earl  Grey,  as  little  able  previously  to  control 
the  heats  and  chills  of  the  political  atmosphere  as  the 
husbandman  to  control  the  weather,  on  which  all  his 
interests  depend,  reaps  the  harvest  of  his  political  life.  It 
is  not  our  present  purpose  to  speak  of  the  great  measure 
which  will  be  ever  associated  with  his  name  in  the  history 
of  our  country.  With  all  its  defects,  it  indisputably  did 
much  for  the  letter  of  the  Constitution,  and  nowhere  so 
much  as  in  Scotland.  It  everywhere  extended  the  basis 
on  which  the  liberty  of  the  subject  rests  ;  and  nowhere 
else  had  that  basis  been  so  narrow  as  in  this  northern 
kingdom,  and  nowhere  else  had  it  been  so  unsound.  It 
is,  however,  the  "spirit,"  not  the  "letter,"  that  "  maketh 
alive  ; "  and  it  is  not  from  statesmen,  however  enlightened 
or  honest,  that  the  spirit  can  come.  They  can  construct 
the  framework  of  constitutions ;  they  can  mould  them  out 


76  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

of  the  humble  materials  of  which  laws  are  made,  as  the 
body  of  Adam  was  moulded  from  the  dust;  but  virtue  in 
the  people  is  that  alone  breath  of  life  without  which  they:, 
cannot  become  "living  souls."  The  people  of  Scotland 
had  scarce  any  political  standing  in  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries,  and  yet,  animated  by  a  right  spirit, 
they  accomplished  much.  One  of  these  centuries  wit- 
nessed the  Reformation,  and  the  other  the  Revolution. 
During  the  last  twelve  years  our  people  have  possessed,  on 
the  contrary,  ample  political  standing ;  but  it  would  not 
be  quite  so  easy  to  say  what  great  work  they  have  accom- 
plished. 

The  personal  character  of  the  nobleman  over  whom 
the  grave  has  so  lately  closed  seems  to  have  been  truly 
excellent.  He  was  a  Whig  of  a  high  type  ;  and  we  cer- 
tainly think  none  the  less  of  him  from  the  circumstance 
that,  while  he  struggled  to  extend  the  privileges  of  the 
people,  his  leanings  were  aristocratic,  and  that  he  stood 
determinedly  by  his  order.  He  exerted  himself  with  a 
life-long  exertion  to  do  what  he  deemed  justice  to  one 
class  of  the  community,  while  his  feelings  and  predilections 
were  mainly  with  another.  There  are  incidents  not  a 
few  in  his  biography  that  tell  remarkably  well.  On  the 
character  of  Fox  there  rests  the  unhappy  stain  left  by  his 
public  denial  of  the  marriage  of  the  Prince  Regent,  after- 
wards George  IV.,  to  Mrs.  Fitzherbert,  though  of  that 
marriage  Fox  himself  is  said  to  have  been  a  witness. 
Earl  (then  Mr.)  Grey  is  known  to  have  been  exposed,  in 
the  case,  to  a  similar  temptation  to  that  in  which  his 
leader  was  wanting,  but  he  stood  it  vastly  better.  "  Mr. 
Fox,"  says  one  of  the  Earl's  biographers,  "  being  authorized 
by  the  prince,  had  denied  the  marriage  with  Mrs.  Fitz- 
herbert. The  lady  was  naturally  offended,  and,  to  appease 
her,  the  pi-ince  tried  to  restore  the  matter  to  the  uncer- 
tainty which  had  previously  hung  over  it.  He  wished, 
therefore,  to  have  some  ambiguous  or  equivocating  remark 
made,  as  if  from  authority,  in  the  House  of  Commons; 


EARL  GREY.  77 

and,  with  singular  want  of  discrimination,  Mr.  Grey  was 
applied  to  for  the  purpose.  But  the  unaccommodating 
young  senator  spurned  the  dishonorable  office,  and  gave 
offence  which  was  never  forgotten  or  forgiven."  It  is 
further  to  the  honor  of  Earl  Grey,  that  though  by  no 
means  indifferent  to  the  pleasures  of  place  or  the  possession 
of  power,  he  held  office,  during  his  long  political  life  of 
more  than  half  a  century,  for  little  more  than  five  years. 
He  had  many  opportunities  of  being  in  place  presented  to 
him,  had  he  chosen  to  sacrifice  principle  for  its  sake  ;  but 
he  did  not  choose  it.  Yery  different  indeed  would  be  the 
present  position  of  the  party  to  which  he  belonged,  had 
they  but  imitated  their  leader  in  this  important  respect. 
In  these  times  of  reaction  on  old  Toryism,  none  the  wiser 
or  better  for  all  the  experience  of  the  past,  they  would 
be  by  far  the  strongest,  —  not  what  they  now  are,  one  of 
the  weakest  parties  in  the  country. 
7* 


78  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 


X. 

LORD  JEFFREY. 

The  most  eminent  of  our  Edinburgh  literati  —  a  man 
who  for  nearly  half  a  century  has  enjoyed  European  celeb- 
rity as  first  in  the  realms  of  criticism,  and  a  reputation  at 
least  coextensive  with  his  native  country  as  a  politician 
and  a  lawyer  —  has  passed  from  off  the  stage  of  mortal 
existence,  and  now  lives  but  in  the  unseen  world.  On  the 
evening  of  Saturday  last,  Francis  Jeffrey,  the  philosophic 
and  tasteful  reviewer,  the  accomplished  advocate,  and 
judicious  and  honest  judge,  died,  after  a  few  days'  illness, 
at  his  Edinburgh  residence  in  Moray  Place,  in  the  seventy- 
eighth  year  of  his  age. 

Lord  Jeffrey  may  be  properly  regarded  as  the  last  Scot- 
tish survivor  of  that  group  of  eminent  men,  contemporary 
with  Napoleon,  to  which  Chalmers  and  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
Wordsworth  and  Wellington,  Goethe,  Cuvier,  Humboldt, 
and  Chateaubriand  belong.  Professor  Wilson,  though  fist 
descending  into  the  vale  of  years,  we  regard  as  the  member 
of  a  somewhat  later  group,  —  that  of  Lockhart,  Carlyle, 
and  Macaulay,  Lamartine,  Arago,  and  Sir  David  Brewster. 
It  was  the  last  Scotchman  of  that  elder  group  of  distin- 
guished men  who  achieved  celebrity  or  influenced  opinion 
as  early  as  the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  or  nearly 
so,  that  quitted  this  scene  of  things  on  the  evening  of 
Saturday.  And  he  has  left  to  the  biographer,  in  the  story 
of  liis  life,  much  that  is  of  signal  interest  and  impor- 
tance in  the  legal  and  political  history  of  our  country, 
and  much  in  the  history  of  its  literature  that  is  better 
represented  by  his  career  than  by  that  of  any  other  in- 
dividual.    He  represents  a  mighty  revolution  in  letters, 


LOKD   JEFFREY.  79 

wliich  has  perhaps  considerably  lessened  the  number  of 
books,  but  increased,  beyond  all  calculation,  the  number  of 
brilliant  articles.  Not  a  few  superior  men  have  passed 
away  in  consequence,  and  left  no  permanent  mark  behind 
them  ;  but  that  literature  of  the  periodic  press  which  forms, 
perhaps  too  exclusively,  the  staple  reading  of  the  age,  — ■ 
which  occupies  men's  minds  and  influences  their  opinions 
to-day,  but  which  is  in  great  part  forgotten  ere  to-morrow, 
and  which,  in  this  as  in  other  respects,  forms  that  daily 
bread  of  the  republic  of  letters  which  cannot  be  wanted, 
and  which,  once  used  up,  is  never  more  thought  of,  —  has 
been  immensely  heightened  in  its  tone  and  power,  and 
become  a  great  engine,  without  whose  potent  assistance  no 
cause  can  succeed,  and  no  jjarty  prosper.  Previous  to  the 
appearance  of  perhaps  the  only  "  Edinburgh  Review " 
known  to  the  great  bulk  of  our  readers,  there  had  been 
men,  who,  in  calibre  and  literary  attainment,  at  least 
equalled  the  ablest  of  its  contributors  engaged  in  writing 
for  periodicals.  We  do  not  refer  to  tliose  diurnal,  or 
hebdomadal,  or  semi-hebdomadal  publications  of  the  last 
century,  which  may  be  regarded  as  commencing  with  the 
"  Tatler  "  and  Sir  Richard  Steele,  and  terminating  with 
the  "  Lounger  "  and  Henry  M'Kenzie,  —  works  which  con- 
tain some  of  the  finest  writings  in  the  language,  —  but 
simply  to  the  newspapers  and  magazines.  For  these,  com- 
pelled by  stern  necessity.  Goldsmith  wrote  for  several 
years.  His  "Citizen  of  the  World" — one  of  the  most 
exquisitely  written  books  in  any  tongue  —  first  appeared 
as  a  series  of  essays  in  the  "  Public  Ledger;"  and  he  wrote 
criticisms  for  the  "Monthly  Review,"  and  articles  for 
the  "  British  Magazine."  Smollett  conducted  for  about 
seven  years  the  "  Critical  Review  ;  "  Bui-ke  wrote  for  the 
"Annual  Register;"  and  Johnson  labored  for  years  for 
the  "Literary  Magazine,"  the  "Gentleman's  Magazine," 
and  the  "  Universal  Visitor."  And  about  half  a  century 
previous  to  the  appearance  of  that  second  "  Ed^bu^gb 
Review"  with  which  the  name  of  JefiVey  must  be  fort^ver 


80  HISTORICAL    \ND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

associated  in  the  history  of  letters,  there  existed  for  about 
a  twelvemonth  a  first  "  Edinburgh  Review,"  conducted  by 
Blair,  Robertson  and  Adam  Smith.  But  there  were  no 
periodicals  of  sustained  effort,  or  (with  perhaps  the  excep- 
tion of  this  first  "  Edinburgh  Review  ")  all  of  whose  con- 
tributors were  men  of  nearly  equal  standing  and  power. 
Burke,  Johnson,  and  Goldsmith  were  associated  in  their 
compelled  labors  with  dull  amateurs,  or  the  scribblers  of 
Grub  Street ;  and  Smollett,  in  his  description  in  "  Hum- 
phrey Clinker  "  of  a  dinner  of  authors,  is  known  to  have 
drawn,  in  the  hair-brained  raediocritists  which  he  portrays, 
some  of  the  nameless  contributors  associated  with  liim  in 
his  periodical.  Even  when,  as  in  the  Edinburgh  instance, 
all  the  writers  were  superior,  they  seem  to  have  given  but 
half  their  mind  to  their  work  of  article-writing.  The  first 
"Edinburgh  Review  "  is  a  respectable,  but  not  a  very  bril- 
liant production.  Its  writers  were  engaged  at  the  time  on 
works  which  still  live:  Robertson  on  his  "History  of 
Scotland,"  Smith  on  his  "  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments," 
and  Blair  in  maturing  the  thinking  of  his  "  Lectures  on 
Criticism  and  the  Belles  Lettres;"and  they  could  spare 
for  their  occasional  critiques  merely  the  odds  and  ends  of 
their  cogitations.  "  No  man  ever  did  anything  well,"  says 
Johnson,  "to  which  he  did  not  apply  the  whole  bent  of 
his  mind  ; "  and  it  was  reserved  for  Jeffrey  and  his  associ- 
ates at  once  to  render,  by  their  equality  of  talent,  a  peri- 
odical all  of  a  piece,  and,  in  generous  rivalry,  to  do  for 
it  the  very  best  which  they  were  capable  of  performing. 
Robertson  and  Adam  Smith  could,  and  did,  immensely 
exceed  themselves  in  all  they  had  done  for  their  "  Review ; " 
whereas  Jeffrey  and  Sydney  Smith  did  all  they  were  capa- 
ble of  doing  for  theirs ;  and  so  on  no  other  occasion  or  form 
did  they  exceed  what  they  had  accomplished  as  periodical 
reviewers.  And  hence  the  great  revolution  in  periodical 
literature  which  they  effected.  Without  once  designing 
any  su|)i  thing,  they  succeeded  in  raising  its  platform  from 


LORD   JEFFREY.  81 

the  level  of  Grub  Street  to  very  nearly  that  of  the  stand- 
ard of  literature  of  the  country. 

We  say,  without  once  designing  any  such  thing.  Cha- 
teaubriand shrewdly  remarks  of  Napoleon,  that,  "  by  lead- 
ing on  France  to  the  attack," —  that  is,  by  bringing  armies 
into  the  field  some  five  or  six  times  more  numerous  than 
had  wont  to  be  employed  under  the  old  school  of  strategy, 
—  "  he  taught  Europe  also  to  march :  the  chief  point  which 
has  since  been  considered  is  to  multiply  means;  masses  have 
been  balanced  by  masses.  Instead  of  a  hundred  thousand 
men,  six  hundred  thousand  have  been  brought  into  the 
field;  instead  of  a  hundred  pieces  of  cannon,  five  hundred 
have  been  employed."  And  such  was  the  efiect  produced 
by  that  introduction  of  fii'st-class  talent  into  the  field  of 
periodic  literature  with  which  we  associate  the  name  of 
Jeffrey.  The  "  Edinburgh  Review  "  was  a  Whig  periodical ; 
and  the  interests  of  the  opposite  party  imperatively  de- 
manded that  its  park  of  artillery  five  hundred  strong  should 
be  met  by  an  antagonist  park  in  which  the  guns  should  be 
as  numerous  and  their  calibre  as  great.  And  hence  the 
origination  of  the  "  Quarterly  Review,"  edited  by  Giflbrd, 
and  to  which  men  such  as  Southey  and  Sir  Walter  Scott 
contributed.  And  then  the  magazines  caught  the  high  tone 
communicated  by  the  Review  ;  and  in  this  race,  as  in  the 
other,  Scotland  assumed  the  lead.  The  "  Christian  Instruc- 
tor," edited  by  Dr.  Andrew  Thompson,  and  supported  by 
Dr.  M'Crie,  Dr.  Chalmers,  and  Dr.  Somerville,  started  first 
on  the  new  table-land  of  elevation  ;  though  its  theological 
character,  and  its  restriction  to  the  old  Presbyterianism  of 
Scotland,  served  greatly  to  limit  both  its  influence  and  its 
fame.  "  Blackwood  "  followed,  and  took  at  once  a  place  in 
litcM'ature  which  no  magazine,  at  least  as  a  whole,  had  ever 
taken  before.  It  was  supported  by  the  contributions  of 
Lockhart,  Gait,  DeQuincey,  Moir,  and  Alison,  and  con- 
ducted, it  was  understood,  for  many  years  by  Professor 
Wilson.  The  "New  Monthly"  followed,  with  TJiomas 
Campbell  at  its  head;    and  about  much  the  same  time, 


82  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

Byron,  Shelly,  and  Leigh  Hunt  originated  their  short-lived 
periodical  the  "  Liberal."  The  newspapers  had  partaken 
at  even  an  earlier  period  of  the  induced  elevation.  Like 
the  magazines  and  reviews,  they  had  been  the  occasional 
vehicles  of  very  powerful  writing  at  a  comparatively  earlier 
period.  The  "Letters  of  Junius  "  had  appeared  in  the  "Gen- 
eral Advertiser."  Coleridge  had,  for  a  short  time  about 
the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  conducted  the  "Morn- 
ing Post."  Sir  James  Macintosh  had,  at  a  rather  earlier 
date,  written  copiously  for  several  of  the  liberal  papers  of 
the  day.  But  it  was  not  until  the  "  Edinburgh  Review  " 
had  fairly  entered  on  its  career,  that  that  general  elevation 
of  the  newspaper  platform  took  place  which  is  now  one 
of  the  marked  characteristics  of  periodic  literature.  Edin- 
burgh has  been  in  this  respect  far  behind  London ;  but  a 
very  great  change  has  taken  place  during  the  last  forty 
years  even  in  Edinburgh.  There  are  men  still  connected 
with  our  newspaper  printing-oflfices  who  remember  when 
papers  by  the  management  of  which  fortunes  were  realized 
were  conducted  either  without  an  editor  at  all,  or  by  some 
printer  or  mere  man  of  business,  who  would  be  unfitted  in 
the  present  time  to  perform  the  duties  of  even  a  sub-editor 
or  reporter.  It  was  mainly  through  that  indirect  influence 
of  the  labors  of  Lord  Jeflfi-ey  and  his  f  -m  "I-  •"-  "vhich  we 
refer  that  Edinburgh  has  reckoned  an  u^r  ;'.;>  ^  wspaj)er 
editors,  during  the  last  thirty  years,  wi-..:j  .^UuX-  vS  M'Cul- 
lock,  M'Laren,  Buchanan,  Dr.  James  Brown,  Alexander 
Sutherland,  and  John  Malcolm.  The  provincial  news- 
paper press  has  also  caught  the  general  tone.  Had  there 
been  no  "Edinburgh  Review,"  newspapers  such  as  the 
"Dumfries  Courier"  and  the  " Inverness  Courier "  would 
have  been  prodigies.  No  later  than  the  day  on  which 
Lord  Jefii-ey  died,  a  gentleman  of  business  habits,  who  had 
been  for  some  time  unsuccessfully  engaged  in  looking  out 
for  an  editor  to  conduct  a  weekly  paper  established  in  a 
large  town,  remarked  to  us,  that  of  all  men  an  efficient 
newspaper  editor  was  perhaps  the  most  difficult  to  find. 


LORD   JEFFREY.  83 

It  occurred  to  us  not  long  after,  on  hearing  of  his  lord- 
sliip's  death,  that,  in  all  probability,  had  he  never  lived,  the 
difficulty  would  not  have  existed 

This  indirect  influence  exercised  on  periodic  literature 
by  Lord  Jefii'ey  was  perhaps  more  important  in  the  main 
than  that  which  he  wielded  as  a  political  writer  or  a  critic. 
And  yet  in  both  departments  he  stood  very  high.  His 
influence  as  a  ijolitician  is  of  course  mixed  up  with  that 
of  his  associates,  and  must  be  regarded  generally  as  that 
of  the  "  Review  "  which  he  conducted.  For  about  thirty 
years,  as  we  had  once  before  occasion  to  remark,  the 
"  Edinburgh  Review  "  labored  indefatigably  with  various 
political  objects  in  view,  mainly,  however,  to  repress  the 
dreaded  growth  of  despotism,  and  to  assert  the  cause  of 
constitutional  reform.  And  for  at  least  the  latter  half 
of  that  period  its  exertions  were  accompanied  by  very 
marked  success.  During  the  war  with  France,  the  current 
ran  strongly  against  it.  It  was  thrown  out  in  its  calcula- 
tions, both  by  that  infatuation  of  Napoleon  which  led  to 
the  Russian  campaign,  and  by  the  military  genius  of 
Wellington.  The  consequent  issue  of  the  great  revolu- 
tionary struggle  was  a  struggle  which  it  had  not  foreseen. 
There  was,  besides,  a  principle  elicited  in  our  state  of  war 
which  ran  counter  in  its  influence  to  that  of  the  "Review." 
The  resentments  of  the  people  were  so  enraged  with  their 
enemies  abroad,  that  they  had  comparatively  little  indig- 
nation to  spare  for  their  rulers  at  home.  But  a  period  of 
peace  told  powerfully  in  its  favor.  Men  found  leisure  to 
look  through  the  spectacles  which  it  fui'nished  at  the 
defects  of  existing  institutions  ;  its  politics  spi'ead  and 
gathered  strength;  a  second  French  revolution,  achieved 
under  immensely  more  favorable  circumstances  than  the 
first,  wrought  as  decidedly  in  favor  of  the  Liberal  cause  in 
Britain  as  the  first  French  revolution  had  wrought  against  it; 
and  Whiggism  at  length  saw  its  favorite  scheme  of  political 
reform  embodied  into  a  bill,  and  passed  into  a  \^y%  And 
in  producing  this  result  the  "Edinburgh  Review  "  had  a 


84  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

large  and  sensible  share.  But  then,  Jeffrey  was  simply 
one  of  several  powerful-minded  men  to  Avhom  the  period- 
ical owed  its- political  potency.  Regarded,  however,  in 
its  purely  critical  character,  and  as  a  leader  of  the  public 
taste  in  poetry  and  the  belles  lettres,  the  case  was 
otherwise.  Though  Sir  James  Macintosh  occasionally 
contributed  a  paper,  —  such  as  his  critique  on  the  Poems 
of  Rogers,  which  in  this  department  fully  sustained  the 
general  character  of  the  periodical, —  Jeffrey  to  all  intents 
and  purposes  was  the  Edinburgh  Review."  And  in  this 
his  peculiar  province  he  took  his  place,  we  have  no  hesi- 
tation in  saying,  as  the  first  British  critic  of  the  age.  Pie 
had  his  prejudices  and  his  deficiencies,  and  occasionally  — 
put  out  in  his  reckoning  by  what  the  poet  beautifully 
describes  as  "glorious  faults,  which  critics  dare  not  mend  " 
—  he  committed,  as  in  the  case  of  Wordsworth,  grave  mis- 
takes ;  but,  take  him  all  in  all,  where,  we  ask,  is  the  critic 
of  the  present  century  who  is  to  be  placed  in  the  scale 
against  Francis  Jeffrey  ?  His  peculiar  fitness  for  his  task 
resulted  mainly  from  the  exquisiteness  of  his  taste,  his 
fearless  hongpty,  and  the  integrity  of  his  judgment.  His 
few  mistakes  arose  chiefly  from  certain  partial  defects 
in  faculty.  These,  however,  were  important  enough  to 
prevent  him,  if  not  from  taking  his  place  as  the  first  of 
contemporary  critics,  from  at  least  entering  those  highest 
walks  of  British  criticism  in  which  a  very  few  of  the 
master  minds  of  the  past  were  qualified  to  expatiate,  and 
but  these  few  exclusively.  There  are  snatches  of  criticism 
in  the  prefaces  and  dedications  of  Dryden,  in  Burke's 
"Tieatise  on  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful,"  and  even  in 
Johnson's  "  British  Poets  "  (though  there  were  important 
faculties  which  Johnson  also  lacked),  which  Jeffrey  has 
not  equalled.  But  that  man  rises  high  in  an  intellectual 
department,  who,  though  not  equal  to  some  of  the  more 
illustrious  dead,  is  first  among  his  compeers.  We  know 
not  at  %nce  a  better  illustration  of  what  Jeffrey  could  do, 
and  what  he  failed  in  doing,  than  that  furnished  by  his 


LORD  JEFFREY.  85 

article  on  the  Sense  of  the  Beautiful.  There  is  scarce 
a  finer  piece  of  writing  in  the  language  ;  and  yet  it 
embodies,  as  part  of  its  very  essence,  the  great  sophism 
that,  apart  from  the  influence  of  the  associative  faculty, 
there  is  no  beauty  in  color.  We  know  of  but  one  other 
sophism  in  the  language  that  at  all  approaches  it  in  the 
elegance  and  delicacy  of  its  form,  and  which  resembles  it, 
too,  in  its  perfect  honesty  and  good  faith  ;  for  both 
authors  wrote  as  they  felt,  and  failed  in  producing  more 
than  partial  truth,  which  is  always  tantamount  to  error, 
simply  because  they  both  lacked  a  faculty  all-essential  to 
the  sepai-ate  inquiries  which  they  conducted.  Both  were 
fully  sensible  of  the  immense  power  of  association  in 
eliciting  images  of  delight ;  but  the  one,  insensible  to 
the  beauty  of  simple  sounds,  from  the  want  of  a  musical 
ear,  attributed  all  the  power  of  music  to  association  alone; 
and  the  other,  insensible  to  the  beauty  of  simple  colors, 
attributed,  from  a  similar  want  of  appreciating  faculty,  all 
their  power  of  gratifying  the  eye  to  a  similar  cause.  All 
our  readers  are  acquainted  with  the  article  on  the  Beauti- 
ful ;  but  the  following  fine  stanzas,  the  production  of  John 
Finlay,  a  Scottish  poet,  who  died  early  in  the  present 
century,  when  he  had  but  mastered  his  powers,  may  be 
new  to  most  of  them  :  — 

"  Wliy  does  the  melting  voice,  the  tuneful  string, 
A  sigh  of  woe,  a  tear  of  pleasure  bring? 
Can  simple  sounds  or  joy  or  grief  inspire, 
Or  wake  the  soul  responsive  to  the  wire? 
Ah,  no !  some  other  charm  to  rapture  draws, 
More  than  the  finger's  skill,  the  artist's  laws; 
Some  latent  feeling  at  the  string  awakes, 
Starts  to  new  life,  and  through  the  fibres  shakes; 
Some  cottage-home,  where  first  the  strain  was  heard, 
B}'  many  a  tie  of  former  days  endeared ; 
Some  lovely  maid  who  on  thy  bosom  hung. 
And  breathed  the  note  all  tearful  as  she  sung; 
Some  youth  who  first  awoke  the  pensive  lay,  » 

Friend  of  thy  infant  years,  now  far  away; 
8 


8G  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

Some  scene  that  patriot  blood  embalms  in  song; 
Some  brook  that  winds  thy  native  vales  among,— 
All  steal  into  the  soul,  in  r/itching  train. 

Till  home,  the  maid,  the  friend,  the  scene,  return  again. 
'Twas  thus  the  wanderer  'mid  the  Syrian  wild 
Wept  at  the  strain  he  caroll'd  when  a  child. 
O'er  many  a  weary  waste  the  traveller  passed. 
And  hoped  to  find  some  restinj,*-place  at  last, 
Beneath  some  branchy  shade,  his  journey  done. 
To  shelter  from  the  desert  and  the  sun ; 
And  haply  some  green  spot  the  pilgrim  found, 
And  hailed  and  blessed  the  stream's  delicious  sound. 
When  on  his  ear  the  well  known  ditty  stole, 
That,  as  it  melted,  passed  into  his  soul,  — 
'  O,  Bothwell  bank ! '  —  each  thrilling  sound  conveyed 
The  Scottish  landscape  to  the  palm- tree  shade; 
No  more  Damascus'  streams  his  spirit  held. 
No  more  its  minarets  his  eye  beheld : 
Pharpar  and  Abana  unheeded  glide," 
He  hears  in  dreams  the  music  of  the  Clyde; 
And  Bothwell's  bank,  amid  o'er-arching  trees. 
Echoes  the  bleat  of  flocks,  the  hum  of  bees. 
With  less  keen  rapture  on  the  Syrian  shore. 
Beneath  the  shadow  of  the  sycamore. 
His  eye  had  turned,  amid  the  burst  of  day, 
Tadmor's  gigantic  columns  to  survey. 
That  sullenly  their  length  of  shadows  throw 
On  sons  of  earth,  who,  trembling,  gaze  below. 

'Twas  thus  when  to  Quebec's  proud  heights  afar 
Wolfe's  chivalry  rolled  on  the  tide  of  war, 
The  hardy  Highlander,  so  fierce  before, 
Languidly  lifted  up  the  huge  claymore; 
To  him  the  bugle's  mellow  notes  were  dumb. 
And  even  the  rousing  thunders  of  the  drum. 
Till  the  loud  pibroch  sounded  in  the  van, 
And  led  to  battle  forth  each  dauntless  clan. 
Onrush  the  brave,  the  plaided  chiefs  advance; 
The  line  resounds,  '  Lochiel's  awa'  to  France! ' 
With  vigorous  arm  the  falchion  lift  on  high. 

Fight  as  their  fathers  fought,  and  like  their  fathers  die." 

Long  as  our  extract  is,  there  are,  we  suppose,  few  of 
our  readers  who  will  deem  it  too  long.    Independently, 


LORD   JEFFREY.  87 

voo,  of  its  exquisite  vein,  it  illustrates  better  both  the 
merits  and  the  defects  of  Lord  Jeffrey's  theory  of  beauty 
than  any  other  passage  in  the  round  of  our  literature  with 
which  we  are  acquainted.  For  there  are  scores  whose 
degree  of  musical  taste  compels  them  to  hold  that  there 
is  a  beauty  in  "simple  sounds"  altogether  independent 
of  association,  for  the  single  individuals  whose  sense  of 
the  beauty  of  "  simple  colors "  is  sufficiently  strong 
to  coavince  them  that  it,  like  the  other  sense,  has  an 
underived  existence  wholly  its  own. 

We  haA'e  left  ourselves  but  little  space  to  speak  of  the 
distinguished  man,  so  recently  lost  to  us,  as  a  lawyer,  a 
statesman,  and  a  judge.  He  will  be  long  remembered  in 
Edinburgh  as  one  of  the  most  accomplished  and  effective 
pleaders  that  ever  appeared  at  the  Scottish  bar.  It  has 
become  common  to  allude  to  his  appearances  in  the  House 
of  Commons  as  failures.  We  know  not  how  his  speeches 
may  have  sounded  in  the  old  chapel  of  St.  Stephen's ; 
but  this  we  know,  that  of  all  the  sj^eeehes  in  both  Houses 
of  which  the  Reform  Bill  proved  the  fruitful  occasion,  we 
remember  only  his  :  we  can  ever  recall  some  of  its  happy 
phrases ;  as  when,  for  instance,  he  described  the  important 
measure  which  he  advocated  as  a  firmament  which  was  to 
separate  the  purer  waters  above  from  the  fouler  and  more 
turbulent  waters  below,  —  the  solid  worth  of  the  country, 
zealous  for  reform,  from  its  wild,  unprincipled  licentious- 
ness, bent  on  subversion  ;  and,  founding  mainly  on  this 
selective  instinct  of  our  memory,  we  conclude  that  the 
speech,  which  is  said  to  have  disappointed  friends  and 
gratified  opponents,  must  have  been  really  one  of  the  best 
delivered  at  the  time,  —  perhaps  the  very  best.  As  a 
judge,  the  character  of  Jeffi'ey  may  be  summed  up  in  the 
vigorous  stanza  of  Dryden :  — 

"  In  Israel's  courts  ne'er  sat  an  Abethdia 
With  more  discerning  eyes,  or  hands  more  clean, 
Unbribed,  unsought,  the  wretched  to  redress. 
Swift  of  despatch,  and  easy  of  access." 


88  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

All  accounts  agree  in  representing  him  as  in  private  life 
one  of  the  kindest  and  gentlest  of  mortals,  ever  surrounded 
by  the  aroma  of  a  delicate  sense  of  honor  and  a  transpar- 
ent truthfulness,  equable  in  temper,  in  conversation  full  of 
a  playful  case,  and,  with  even  his  ordinary  talk,  ever 
glittering  in  an  unpremeditated  wit,  "that  loved  to  play, 
not  wound."  Never  was  there  a  man  more  thoroughly 
beloved  by  his  friends.  Though  his  term  of  life  exceeded 
the  allotted  thi-eescore  and  ten  years,  his  fine  intellect,  like 
that  of  the  great  Chalmers,  whom  he  sincerely  loved  and 
respected,  and  by  whom  he  was  much  loved  and  respected 
in  turn,  was  to  the  last  untouched  by  decay.  Only  four 
days  previous  to  that  of  his  death  he  sat  upon  the  bench ; 
only  a  few  months  ago  he  furnished  an  article  for  his  old 
"Review,"  distinguished  by  all  the  nice  discernment  and 
acumen  of  his  most  vigorous  days.  It  is  further  gratifying 
to  know,  that  though  infected  in  youth  and  middle  age 
by  the  wide-spread  infidelity  of  the  first  French  revolu- 
tion, he  was  for  at  least  the  last  few  years  of  his  life  of  a 
different  spirit :  he  read  much  and  often  in  his  Bible ;  and 
he  is  said  to  have  studied  especially,  and  with  much 
Bolicitude,  the  writings  of  St.  PauL 


FIRE  AT  THE  TOWER   OF  LONDON.  89 


XI. 

FIBE  AT  THE  TOWER  OF  LONDON. 

Three  of  the  most  interesting  ancient  buildings  of 
Britain  destroyed  by  fire  within  less  than  ten  years  I 
"  Are  such  calamities  as  these  really  unavoidable  ?  "  asks 
a  writer  in  the  Times,  "  and  ought  we  to  make  up  our 
minds  to  hear  of  the  conflagration  of  some  great  national 
treasure  every  five  or  ten  years  as  a  thing  that  must  be  ?  " 
Treasures  of  at  least  equal  value  still  survive  to  England, 
—  Windsor,  Hampton  Court,  the  British  Museum,  and  the 
great  University  Libraries.  How  are  they  to  be  pro- 
tected ?  Increased  vigilance  and  care  are  recommended 
by  this  writer.  Fires  smoulder  for  hours  ere  they  burst 
forth  so  as  to  be  detected  by  the  watchmen  outside  ;  and 
they  have  then,  in  most  cases,  become  too  formidable  to 
be  got  under.  But  by  stationing  careful  persons  within 
our  more  valuable  buildings,  instructed  to  visit  every 
apartment  and  passage  once  every  hour,  might  not  the 
mischief  be  detected  at  a  stage  when  it  could  be  easily 
overmastered  ?  Statistical  fact,  however,  comes  in  to  show 
that  the  suggestion  is  less  wise  than  obvious  ;  buildings 
so  watched  are  found  more  liable  to  desti'uction  from  fire 
than  those  for  whose  safety  no  such  precautions  are  taken. 
The  private  watchman  has  to  use  a  light  in  his  rounds ;  in 
cold  weather  he  requires  a  fire  ;  though  essential  that  ho 
be  of  steady  character,  there  is  a  liability  to  be  deceived, 
on  the  part  of  the  employer,  considerable  enough  to  tell 
in  the  statistical  table  as  an  element  of  accident.  Even 
when  there  is  no  unsteadiness,  inattention  is  apt  to  creep 
on  men  watching  against  an  enemy  that  has  just  a  chance 
of  visiting  what  they  guard  once  in  five  hundred  years. 
8* 


90  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

In  short,  the  result  of  the  matter  is,  that  insurance  ofSces, 
founding  on  their  tables,  demand  a  higher  premium  for 
houses  guarded  in  this  manner  than  for  houses  left  alto- 
gether unprotected.  To  meet  with  the  evil  tlms  indicated, 
the  writer  in  the  Times  suggests  that  the  watchmen,  in 
order  to  keej^  up  their  vigilance,  should  be  changed  once 
every  two  years ;  that  each  at  the  end  of  his  term  should 
have  to  look  forward  to  some  certain  promotion  as  a  reward 
of  his  diligence  and  care;  and  that  none  but  active,  pru- 
dent, trustworthy  men  should  be  chosen  for  the  office.  The 
scheme,  of  course,  lies  open  to  the  objection  just  hinted  at; 
—  the  inevitable  liability  of  employers  to  be  deceived  in 
chai-acter  would  in  not  a  few  cases  render  the  precaution 
useless.  We  question,  too,  whether  the  attention  of  a 
watchman  who  visited  every  part  of  a  large  building  some 
ten  or  twelve  times  each  night  for  two  years  together, 
could  be  so  continually  kept  up  that  more  than  a  balance 
would  be  struck  between  the  dangers  he  introduced  and 
those  he  prevented.  It  is  doubtful,  we  say,  whether,  even 
by  a  scheme  thus  improved,  the  statistician  would  find  that 
the  watchman  did  more  than  neutralize  himself. 

One  suggestion,  however,  may  be  made  on  the  subject, 
which  we  are  convinced  the  practical  man  will  at  once 
recognize  as  sound.  The  causes  of  the  three  great  fires 
which  within  the  last  seven  years  have  inflicted  three 
great  calamities  on  the  country,  seem,  so  far  as  they  can 
be  ascertained,  to  have  been  all  pretty  much  alike  :  they 
all  appear  to  have  been  connected  with  the  overheating 
of  flues.  The  buildings  were  all  ancient  ones,  —  none  of 
them  at  least  less  so  than  the  times  of  William  III. ;  and 
they  have  all  been  destroyed  by  accidents  originating  in 
the  modern  m,ode  of  heating  houses  by  stoves  and  metal 
flues.  Any  one  practically  acquainted  with  the  subject 
must  see  that  in  every  such  case  the  liability  to  accidents 
of  this  nature  is  inevitably  great.  In  building  a  house, 
the  workman  can  take  the  necessary  precautions  as  he 
proceeds.    He  can  take  care,  for  instance,  that  no  beam 


FIRE   AT   THE   TOWER   OF   LONDON.  01 

or  joist,  or  other  piece  of  wood,  approach  any  flue  nearer 
than  a  foot,  —  the  distance  specified  by  act  of  Parliament ; 
but  in  altering  a  house,  he  can,  in  striking  out  his  flues, 
take  no  such  precautions.  In  cutting  through  the  hard 
walls,  there  may  be  wood  within  an  inch  of  him,  of  which 
he  can  know  nothing,  —  wood  covered  up  at  times  by  a 
mere  film  of  mortar  ;  and  no  possible  care  can  guarantee 
him  against  accidents.  He  is  of  necessity  a  worker  in  the 
dark  ;  nor,  in  the  circumstances,  can  it  be  otherwise. 
Still,  however,  one  very  effectual  kind  of  precaution  may 
be  taken.  A  medium  for  heating  such  a  flue  may  be 
employed  through  which  fire  cannot  be  communicated. 
A  metal  flue,  heated  in  the  ordinary  manner,  becomes 
not  unfrequently  red  hot,  and  sets  fire  to  whatever  wood 
may  be  in  contact  with  it ;  and  hence,  we  doubt  not, 
the  destruction  of  both  Houses  of  Parliament,  the  Royal 
Exchange,  and  the  National  Armory.  But  steam,  when 
employed  as  the  heating  medium,  is  restricted  to  a  certain 
temperature,  above  which  it  cannot  rise,  and  which  cannot 
set  fire  to  wood  or  any  other  substance  employed  in 
architecture.  We  would  therefore  suggest  it  should  be 
laid  down  as  a  rule,  that  in  all  ancient  buildings  heated 
by  metal  flues,  the  heating  medium  should  be  steam,  and 
that  the  furnance  should  always  be  in  a  fire-proof  outhouse, 
disconnected  from  every  other  building.  Simple  as  the 
precaution  may  seem,  we  are  certain  it  would  diminish 
the  chances  of  accident  from  fire  by  full  two  thirds  of 
their  present  amount. 

It  is  melancholy  enough  that  in  so  brief  a  period  three 
of  the  most  interesting  public  buildings  of  England  or 
the  world  should  have  thus  perished.  Each  of  the  three 
has  been  associated  for  centuries  with  the  history  of 
Britain,  in  all  for  which  Britain  is  most  famous.  Her 
emporium  of  trade  is  still  a  heap  of  blackened  ruins,  — 
the  noble  and  venerable  pile  that  served  to  connect  her 
commerce  of  the  present  day,  spread  over  every  laud  and 
every  sea,  with  her  commerce  of  three  hundred  years  ago, 


92  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

when  a  few  adventurous  traders  struck  out  in  quest  of 
yet  undiscovered  shores,  into  oceans  still  undefined  by  the 
geographer,  and  whose  remoter  skirts  seemed  as  if  bounded 
by  lines  of  darkness !  Her  halls  of  legislation  perished 
next,  —  erections  the  history  of  which  is  that  of  civil 
liberty,  not  in  Britain  only,  but  over  half  the  world,  — 
places  suggestive  of  every  great  English  name  that  mingles 
in  the  history  of  the  lengthened  contest  between  rigJit 
and  prerogative,  from  the  days  of  Pryne  and  Hampden 
down  to  those  of  Chatham  and  Fox.  And  now  the 
national  magazine  of  trophies  and  arms  has  fallen  a  prey 
to  the  devouring  element.  The  building  representative  of 
the  wars  and  victories  of  Britain  has  shared  the  same  fate 
with  her  halls  of  commerce  and  legislation  ;  and  much 
has  perished,  as  in  the  other  cases,  which  cannot  be 
estimated  at  a  money  value,  and  which  money  cannot 
replace  ;  —  the  relics  of  Blenheim  and  of  Waterloo,  the 
remains  of  the  two  rebellions  in  Scotland,  the  arms  of 
Tippoo  Saib,  the  bows  employed  at  Cressy  and  Agincourt, 
the  spoils  of  the  Armada  and  of  Trafalgar,  —  much  that 
linked  together  the  names  and  triumphs  of  many  of  our 
greatest  warriors,  by  exhibiting  their  exploits,  if  w6  may 
so  express  ourselves,  on  one  platform,  —  that  grouped 
together  the  memories,  as  well  as  the  trophies,  of  Blake 
and  of  Nelson,  —  that  associated  Henry  the  Fifth  with 
William  of  Orange,  and  bi'ought  into  close  juxtaposition 
the  names  and  histories  of  Marlborough  and  of  Wellington. 
The  loss  is  a  national  one,  and  we  fear  we  would  but  lay 
oureelves  open  to  a  charge  of  extravagance  were  we  to 
say  at  how  great  a  rate  we  estimate  it.  Some  of  our 
readers  must  remember  the  instance  given  by  Thomas 
Brown  of  the  force  with  which  distant  existences  or 
events  are  sometimes  impi'essed  on  the  mind  through  the 
medium  of  objects  in  themselves  trivial  and  uninteresting. 
He  relates  the  case  of  some  English  sailors  moved  to 
sudden  tears  by  thoughts  of  home  and  their  friends,  on 
finding  on  the  bleak  coast  of  Labrador  a  metal  spoon  with 


FIRE  AT  THE   TOWER   OP   LONDGISr.  93 

the  name  "London"  stamped  on  the  handle.  Such  is  the 
constitution  of  the  mind,  that  the  seen  and  the  tangible 
impart  to  whatever  we  associate  with  them  impressiveness 
and  reality.  The  armor  worn  by  an  ancient  king  sets 
him  much  more  vividly  before  us  than  the  chronicles  of 
his  reign,  however  minute  ;  the  trophies  of  a  battle  enable 
us  better  to  realize  it  than  the  most  graphic  descriptions 
of  the  historian,  —  or,  rather,  they  give  to  the  descriptions 
a  new  sense  of  truth,  by  rendering  them  in  some  degree 
evident  to  the  senses ;  —  they  are  the  stone  and  earth  by 
•which  we  enfeoff  ourselves  in  them  as  matters  of  solid 
belief.  There  is  an  interest,  too,  in  such  relics  regarded 
in  their  connection  with  classical  literature,  as  a  sort  of 
goods  and  chatties  of  cultivated  minds.  Who  acquainted 
with  letters,  whether  in  our  own  country  or  abroad,  did 
not  regret,  in  the  destruction  of  both  Houses  of  Parlia- 
ment, the  loss  of  the  old  and  faded  tapestry  which  sug- 
gested to  Chatham  his  eloquent  and  impressive  appeal  ? 
Or  who  interested  in  Shakspeare  does  not  feel  that  England 
was  richer  for  possessing  what  it  possessed  only  a  week 
ago,  —  the  identical  apartment  in  which  Clarence  was 
smothered  in  his  Malmsey  ?  Whatever  is  intimately 
associated  with  the  great  names  of  a  nation  forms  a 
portion  of  the  national  wealth.  The  feeling  that  it  does 
so,  says  an  eminent  writer  of  the  last  age,  is  a  feeling 
implanted  by  nature;  "and  when  I  find  Tully  confessing 
of  himself  that  he  could  not  forbear,  at  Athens,  to  visit  the 
walks  and  houses  which  the  old  philosophers  had  frequented 
or  inhabited,  and  recollect  the  reverence  which  every  nation, 
civil  and  barbarous,  has  paid  to  the  ground  where  merit 
has  been  buried,  I  am  afraid  to  declare  against  the  general 
voice  of  mankind,  and  am  inclined  to  believe  that  this 
regard  which  we  involuntarily  pay  to  the  meanest  relio 
of  a  man  great  and  illustrious,  is  intended  as  an  incite- 
ment to  labor,  and  an  encouragement  to  expect  the  same 
renown,  if  it  be  sought  by  the  same  virtues." 


94  HISTORICAL   AXD   nOGRAPHIC/VL. 


XII. 

THE  CENTENARY  OF  «  THE  FORTT-FIVEr 

The  General  Assembly  of  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland 
held  its  first  meeting  at  Inverness  on  Thursday  the  21st 
ult.  ;  and  on  Tuesday  the  19th,  just  two  days  before,  a 
party  of  gentlemen  and  ladies,  accompanied  by  half  a 
dozen  pipers,  visited  Glenfinnon  in  rather  showery  weather, 
and  called  their  visit  the  "Centennial  Commemoration 
of  the  Gathering  of  the  Clans."  A  great  reality,  and  the 
meagre  ghost  of  what  had  been  a  great  reality  a  hundred 
years  ago,  entered  upon  the  stage  at  nearly  the  same  place 
and  time,  but  with  a  very  different  result  from  that  which 
almost  always  takes  place  in  the  ghost  scene  in  Hamlet. 
Hamlet  the  living  —  a  thing,  as  he  himself  informs  us,  of 
"  too,  too  solid  flesh "  —  attracts  but  a  small  share  of 
attention  compared  with  that  excited  by  the  unsolid 
spectre  of  Hamlet  the  dead  ;  the  shadow  fairly  eclipses 
the  substance.  But  here,  on  the  contrary,  it  was  the  sub- 
stance that  fairly  eclipsed  the  shadow.  The  solid  reality 
so  occupied  the  mind  of  the  Highlands  that  it  had  not  a 
thought  to  spare  on  the  unsolid  ghost ;  and  so  the  ghost, 
all  drooping  and  disconsolate,  passed  off  the  stage  unap- 
plauded  and  unseen.  We  could  find  no  room  at  the  time 
for  the  paragraph  that  formed  the  sole  record  of  its  en- 
trance and  exit :  our  columns  were  occupied  to  the  full 
with  matters  which  the  "  clans  "  deemed  of  more  serious 
concernment  than  the  centenary  of  their  gathering  in 
Glenfinnon,  -i-  among  the  rest,  with  the  very  grave  fact 
that  not  a  few  of  their  present  chieftains  are  grossly  out- 
raging their  rights  of  conscience,  and  chasing  them,  when 
they  meet  to  worship  God  on  the  brown  moors  and  bleak 


THE  CENTENARY  OF  "  THE  FORTY- FIVE."      95 

hillsides  of  their  country,  to  its  exposed  cross-roads  and 
its  wild  sea-beaches.  But  we  have  found  room  for  it  now, 
not  as  a  piece  of  news,  —  for,  after  the  lapse  of  a  month, 
it  has  become  somewhat  stale,  —  but  as  the  record  of  an 
event  which,  though  but  a  trifle  in  itself,  is  at  least  inter- 
estinsr  in  what  it  indicates.  A  feather  has  been  held  to 
the  lips  of  dead  Jacobitism,  to  ascertain  whether  there 
was  breath  enough  left  within  to  stir  the  fibres,  and  not  a 
single  fibre  has  moved ;  and  the  paragraph  on  the  "  Cen- 
tennial Commemoration  "  records  the  experiment  and  it8 
result. 

There  are  curious  mental  phenomena  connected  with 
the  history  of  the  decay  of  Jacobitism  in  Scotland,  Like 
the  matter  of  decomposing  bodies,  it  passed,  at  a  certain 
stage  in  its  progress,  from  the  solid  to  the  gaseous  form, 
and  found  entrance  in  the  more  subtle  state  into  a  class 
of  minds  from  which,  in  its  grosser  and  more  tangible 
condition,  it  had  been  excluded.  We  are  introduced  in 
the  letters  of  Burns  to  an  ancient  lady,  stately  and  solemn, 
and  much  a  Jacobite,  who  boasted  that  she  had  the  blood 
of  the  Bruce  in  her  veins,  and  who  conferred,  in  virtue  of 
her  descent,  the  dignity  of  knighthood  on  the  poet.  We 
learn  further,  that  the  poet  and  the  ancient  lady,  during 
the  evening  they  spent  together,  agreed  remarkably  well : 
she  would  scarce  have  knighted  him  otherwise.  She  pro- 
posed toasts  so  full  of  loyalty  to  the  exiled  family  that 
they  were  gross  treason  against  the  reigning  one ;  but, 
notwithstanding  their  extremeness,  the  poet  cordially  drank 
to  them,  and,  in  short,  seemed  in  every  respect  as  zealous 
a  Jacobite  as  herself^  But  there  was  a  wide  difference 
between  the  Jacobitism  of  Burns  and  that  of  the  ancient 
lady.  Hers  was  of  the  solid,  his  of  the  gaseous  cast. 
Her  mind  was  of  the  order  in  which  effete  opinions  and 
dying  beliefs  are  cherished  to  the  last ;  his  of  the  salient 
order,  that  are  the  first  to  receive  new  impressions  and  to 
take  up  new  views.  She  would  undoubtedly  have  died  a 
Jacobite  of  the  old  grim  type,  that  were  content  to  forfeit 


96  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

land  and  life  in  the  cause  of  a  shadowy  loyalty;  he,  on  the 
other  hand,  only  a  few  years  after,  incurred  the  suspicion 
and  displeasure  of  Government  by  sending  a  present  of 
artillery  to  the  French  Convention,  to  assist  in  defending 
a  people  who  had  deposed  their  king,  against  all  other 
kings,  and  the  Jacohites  of  their  own  country.  The 
Jacobite  of  one  year,  who  addressed  enthusiastic  verses  to 
the  "revered  defenders  of  beauteous  Stuart,"  and  composed 
the  "  Chevalier's  Lament,"  had  become  in  the  next  the 
uncompromising  Jacobin,  who  wrote  "  A  man's  a  man  for 
a'  that."  Now,  through  the  very  opposite  classes  of  minds 
represented  by  the  old  lady  and  the  poet  has  Jacobitism 
})assed  in  Scotland,  in  its  progress  to  extinction.  The 
class  of  true  Jacobites  —  the  men  in  whom  Jacobitism 
was  a  solid  principle  —  died  with  the  generation  that 
fought  at  Culloden,  and  they  were  succeeded  by  the  class 
to  whom  Jacobitism  formed  merely  a  sort  of  laughing-gas, 
that  agreeably  excited  the  feelings.  These  last  bore  ex- 
actly the  same  sort  of  relation  to  the  race  that  preceded 
them,  that  our  admirers  of  earnestness  in  the  present  day 
bear  to  the  earnest  men  of  a  bygone  time  whom  they 
admire.  Their  principle  was  ineffective  as  a  principle  of 
action  :  it  was  purely  a  thing  of  excited  imaginations,  and 
of  feelings  strung  by  the  aspirations  of  romance ;  and 
died  away,  even  when  elevated  to  its  highest  pitch,  in 
tones  of  sweet  music,  or  the  wild  cadences  of  ballad  poetry. 
But  this  Jacobitism  of  the  middle  stage  of  decay  had 
at  least  the  merit  of  being  a  reflection  of  the  real  Jaco- 
bitism that  had  gone  before.  It  was  Jacobitism  mirrored 
in  poetry.  Not  such,  however,  the  character  of  yet  a 
third  species  of  Jacobitism,  that  exists  at  the  present  in  a 
few  calculating  minds  wretchedly  unfitted  for  the  work  of 
calculation.  We  have  heard  of  an  English  divine  of  the 
last  century,  who,  having  grafted  on  his  theology  the  phi- 
losophy of  Bolingbroke  and  Pope,  used  to  assert  in  his  dis- 
courses that  whatever  was  was  right,  and  who  was  urged 
after  sermon,  on  one  occasion,  by  an  individual  of  his 


THE   CENTENARY   OF  "  THE   FORTY-FIVE."  97 

congregation,  —  a  little,  thin  man,  formed  somewhat  like 
the  letter  S,  with  one  shoulder  greatly  higher  and  one  leg 
greatly  shorter  than  the  other,  —  to  say  whether  he  was 
all  right.  "  Oh  yes,  all  right,"  was  the  unhesitating  reply 
of  the  reverend  doctor ;  "  you  are  quite  right  for  a  crip- 
pled Now,  the  middle  stage  of  Scotch  Jacobitism  was  in 
like  manner  quite  a  right  thing  of  its  kind  :  its  legs  and 
shoulders  were  not  equal ;  it  stumped  about  on  a  Jacobit- 
ical  leg  to-day,  and  sometimes,  as  in  the  case  of  Burns, 
stood  on  a  Jacobinical  leg  to-morrow  ;  but  then  it  was 
all  quite  right  for  a  cripple,  and,  if  it  could  do  nothing 
more,  produced  at  least  some  pretty  music  and  some 
exquisite  song.  The  existing  Jacobitism,  or,  rather,  the 
Jacobitism  not  existing,  but  merely  supposed  to  exist,  —  a 
shadow  of  a  shade,  —  a  cripple  a  thousand  times  more 
lame  than  the  Jacobitism  its  immediate  predecessor,  for  it 
has  got  no  legs  at  all;  and  not  only  no  legs,  but  it  can 
neither  sing  nor  make  poetry,  —  is  rendered  ridiculous  by 
being  represented  as  all  right  absolutely,  and  not  as  a 
cripple,  —  as  one  of,  not  the  fantasies,  but  the  forces,  of 
the  country,  —  as  one,  not  of  its  mere  night-dreams,  but  of 
its  waking-day  realities,  —  as  not  a  phantom,  but  a  power. 
The  grand  mistake  of  the  Times  on  this  subject  must 
still  be  fresh  in  the  minds  of  our  readers,  as  it  took  place 
little  more  than  three  years  ago,  during  the  time  of  her 
Majesty's  first  progress  through  Scotland.  The  Scotch 
Lowlanders,  said  this  journal,  —  usually  so  sagacious  in 
its  estimates,  but  sorely  bemuddled  in  these  days  by  its 
Puseyism,  —  were  no  doubt  a  narrow-minded,  fanatical, 
puritanical,  selfish  set,  all  agog  about  non-intrusion  and 
the  independence  of  the  Kirk  ;  but  very  difierent  was  the 
spirit  of  the  Highlands.  There  the  old  genei'ous  loyalty 
still  existed  entire  ;  the  long-derived  devotion  to  hereditary 
claims,  and  the  ancient  implicit  subjection  to  divine  right. 
There,  in  short,  ambitious  Puseyism,  eager  to  fling  its 
shoe  over  Scotland,  was  to  find  in  existing  Jacobitism  such 
a  friend  and.  ally  as  the  "  king  over  the  water  "  had  found 
9 


98  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

in  it  a  century  ago.  The  Times  has  since  been  undeceived 
But  there  still  exist  quarters  in  which  Highland  Jacobitisra 
continues  to  be  fondly  clung  to  as  an  actual  power,  and  a 
religious  party  that  regard  it  as  a  bona  fide  ally.  We 
found,  when  in  the  "Western  Highlands  last  summer,  that 
the  approaching  commemoration  was  regarded  as  a  popish 
movement  at  bottom  ;  and  it  would  be  certainly  not  un- 
interesting to  know  what  proportion  of  the  some  three  or 
four  hundred  Highlanders  that  are  said  to  have  turned 
out  on  the  occasion  belonged  to  the  Romish  communion. 
Certainly,  if  Rome  wished,  by  masquerading  at  the  Cen- 
tenary in  the  romance  of  "  The  Forty-five,"  to  make  an 
impression  on  the  more  active  imaginations  of  the  country, 
she  has  not  been  very  successful.  There  is  vastly  more  of 
the  bizarre  than  of  the  solemn  in  the  trappings  of  the 
Jacobite  domino,  as  accident  and  pretension  have  conspired 
to  trim  it.  It  has  got  bells  to  its  cap.  We  see  it  cham- 
pioned by  "  Young  Scotland,"  —  a  personage  recognized 
by  the  half-dozen  that  ever  heard  of  him  as  very  young 
indeed,  —  and  headed  by  a  Percie  Shafton,  the  undoubted 
descendant  of  the  royal  Stuarts,  that  edits  tartan  patterns, 
the  strips  of  which  had  been  preserved  in  manuscript  in 
the  library  of  the  Scotch  Church  at  Douay,  and  trembles, 
meanwhile,  lest  some  unlucky  bodkin  should  establish  the 
maternal  relation  of  old  Overstitch  the  tailor.  Happy 
modern  Jacobitism  !  It  is  no  more  a  great-grandson  of 
the  Pretender  that  you  can  boast  of  as  the  central  figure  in 
your  picturesque  group,  but  the  Pretender  himself,  whole 
and  entire. 

Yes ;  the  river,  with  its  deep  pools  and  eddying  currents, 
has  turned  into  a  difierent  channel  from  that  in  which  it 
flowed  a  century  ago ;  and  it  is  but  idle  work  to  be  wan- 
dering along  the  deserted  course,  with  its  few  stagnant 
shallows,  where  a  handful  of  landlocked  minnows  await  the 
droughts  that  are  to  lay  them  dry,  as  if  the  water  and  the 
gi*eat  fish  were  still  there.  The  tide  of  Highland  devotion 
has  long  since  set  in,  in  a  direction  entirely  opposite.    The 


THE   CENTENARY   OF    "  THE   FORTY-FIVE."  99 

meeting  at  Glenfiution  was  a  meaningless  pageant,  and,  it 
would  seem,  a  miserably  poor  pageant  to  boot.  Its  enthu- 
siasm, warmed  up  specially  for  the  occasion,  and  but  luke- 
warm after  all,  had  no  more  truth  or  reality  in  it  than  that 
of  the  ancient  Pistol  in  the  play.  The  heart  of  the  High- 
lands was  to  be  found  beating  elsewhere.  It  was  at  the 
Assembly  at  Inverness,  to  which  from  distant  valley  and 
solitary  hillside  the  earnest-minded  Celtae  had  congregated 
by  thousands,  that  the  enthusiasm  was  spontaneous  and 
the  devotion  true.  There  beat,  with  all  its  old  truth  and 
warmth,  the  heart  of  the  Highlands.  But  alas  for  the 
poor  Highlanders!  It  seems  to  be  their  destiny  as  a  peo- 
ple to  give  evidence  of  their  earnest  and  truthful  natures 
by  endurance  and  suffering.  Such  was  the  evidence  they 
had  to  tender  of  old  of  their  devotion  to  the  Stuarts,  and 
such  the  evidence  which  they  have  to  tender  now  of  their 
devotion  to  the  cause  of  evangelical  religion  and  a  preached 
gospel.  We  saw  the  stalwart  Camerons  of  Lochiel,  whose 
country  a  century  ago  had  been  wasted  by  fire  and  sword, 
and  themselves  chased  to  the  rocks  and  hills,  for  a  loyalty  to 
a  hereditary  king,  again  chased  from  the  tombs  of  their 
fathers  and  their  little  holdings  to  the  oozy  sea-beach,  and 
there  worshipping  God  under  the  tide-line  ;  and  the  Grants 
of  Strathspey,  —  of  all  our  Highland  clans  the  clan  that  last 
manifested,  after  the  old  type,  its  devotion  to  its  hereditary 
lord  ;  for,  little  more  than  twenty  years  ago,  on  learning 
that  his  person  was  endangered  in  some  electioneering 
contest  in  the  Lowlands,  five  hundred  of  its  fighting  men 
marched  down  fi'om  their  hills  to  protect  him  ;  —  these  poor 
clansmen,  over  a  wide  and  exposed  district,  denied  a  place 
of  shelter,  have  to  worship  in  the  open  air.  And  in  both 
cases  the  persecutor  of  the  clan  was  its  chief,  anxious,  ap- 
parently, that  his  hereditary  followers  should  be  his  fol- 
lowers no  longer,  nor  run  any  further  risk  of  getting  into 
awkward  collisions  with  the  law  for  his  sake.  We  have 
heard  wonder  expressed  that  a  single  century  should  bo 
sufiicient  to  eflfect  in  the  Highland  mind  so  great  a  change 


100  HIssTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

as  the  revolution  indicated  by  the  opposite  aspects  of  the 
"  Centenary  of  the  Forty-five  "  and  the  Inverness  Assem- 
bly. We  do  not  see  that  there  is  much  cause  for  wonder. 
The  Presbyterian  Highlander  of  the  present  day  is  removed 
fuither,  by  some  ten  or  twelve  years,  from  his  popish 
ancestor  who  fought  at  Culloden,  than  the  Presbyterian 
Covenanter  of  1638  was  removed  from  his  popish  ancestor 
who  fought  at  Pinkie.  It  does  not  require  centuries  to 
effect  the  change  in  opinion  and  character  which  evangel- 
ism, when  once  introduced  into  a  country,  is  sure  alwaya 
to  induce.  One  peculiarity,  however,  of  the  Highlander's 
position,  in  reference  to  the  comparatively  late  introduc- 
tion of  evangelism  among  his  hills,  seems  not  unworthy  of 
mention.  Unlike  the  Southern  Scot,  who  recognizes  the 
old  Covenanter  as  his  ancestor,  and  is,  in  some  instances,  a 
Free  Churchman  in  virtue  of  the  fact,  the  Highlander  of  at 
least  the  Western  and  Midland  Highlands  has  no  heredi- 
tary associations  on  the  side  of  his  beliefs.  His  hereditary 
.  associations,  on  the  contrary,  are  ranged  on  the  side  of 
Jacobitism.  But  he  is  not  the  less,  but  the  more  earnest  in 
his  Free  Churchism  in  consequence.  His  feelings  are  more 
fresh,  direct,  and  simple.  He  is  no  mere  admirer  of  the 
Covenanters  ;  he  is  what  the  Covenanters  themselves 
were. 

Alas !  how  the  short-lived  children  of  men  press  on  to 
the  tomb!  A  century  has  now  passed  since  the  clans 
mustered  in  Glenfinnon  ;  and  there  are  few  Scotchmen  in 
middle  life  to  whom  that  event  does  not  stand  as  a  sort  of 
beacon  in  the  tide  of  time,  to  indicate  how  wave  after 
wave  of  the  generations  of  the  past  has  broken  on  the 
silent  shores  of  eternity,  arid  disappeared  from  the  Avorld 
for  ever.  The  writer  6rthe§e  remarks  was  bom^ithin  the 
present  century,  and  yet  even  he  can  look  back  on  some 
three  or  four  several  generations  of  men,  ijeculiarly  marked 
in  their  neighborhood  by  the  epoch  of  the  rebellion,  who 
have  passed  in  succession  from  this  visible  scene  of  things, 
lighted  up  by  the  sun,  to  the  dark  land  of  forgetfulness. 


THE    CENTENARY   OF   "  THE   FORTY-FIVE."  101 

First,  we  remember  a  few  broken  vestiges  of  a  generation 
that  had  been  engaged  in  the  active  business  of  life  when 
the  field  of  CuUoden  was  stricken.  We  attended,  when  a 
mere  boy,  the  funeral  of  an  old  Highlander,  a  Stuart,  who 
had  fought  in  it  on  the  side  of  the  Prince.  We  knew 
another  old  man,  who  had  been  a  ship-boy  at  the  time  in 
a  vessel  with  some  government  stores  aboard,  that,  shortly 
before  the  battle,  was  seized  by  the  rebels  ;  and  have  heard 
him  tell  how,  when  joking  with  them,  —  for  they  were  by 
no  means  a  band  of  cut-throat-looking  men,  —  he  ventured 
to  speak  of  their  Prince  as  the  Pretender,  and  was  cau- 
tioned by  one  of  them  to  use  a  more  civil  word  for  the 
future.  We  remember,  too,  being  brought  by  two  grown- 
up relatives  to  visit  an  old  man  on  his  death-bed,  who, 
like  the  first,  had  fought  at  Culloden,  but  on  the  side  of 
Hanover.  He  had  been  settled  in  life  at  the  time  as  the 
head  gardener  of  a  northern  proprietor,  and  little  dreamed 
of  being  engaged  in  war  ;  but  the  rebellion  broke  out ;  his 
master,  a  kindly  man,  and  a  great  Whig,  volunteered  in 
behalf  of  his  principles  under  Duke  William,  and  his  at- 
tached gardener  went  with  him.  At  the  time  of  our  visit, 
when  stretched  on  the  bed  from  which  he  never  after- 
ward rose,  he  had  outlived  his  century.  He  had  been  an 
extremely  powerful  man  in  his  day ;  and  the  large  wrin- 
kled hand,  and  huge  structure  of  bone,  and  deep,  full  voice, 
still  remained,  to  testify,  amid  the  general  wreck,  to  what 
he  had  once  been.  His  memory  for  all  the  later  events  of 
his  life  was  gone,  so  that  the  preceding  forty  years  of  it 
seemed  a  blank;  but  well  did  he  remember  the  battle,  and 
Btill  more  vividly,  and  with  deep  execration,  the  succeed- 
ing atrocities  of  Cumberland.  These  vestiges  of  the  age 
of  Culloden  passed  away,  and  the  generation  immediately 
behind  them  fell  into  the  front  ranks,  —  ancient  men  and 
women,  who  had  been  mere  boys  and  girls  at  the  time  of 
the  "fight,"  but  who  vividly  remembered  some  of  its 
details.  We  knew  one  of  these,  an  aged  woman,  who,  on 
the  day  of  the  battle,  had  been  tending  some  sheep  on  a 
9* 


102  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

solitary  moor,  separated  from  that  of  Culloden  by  an  arm 
of  the  sea,  and  screened  by  a  lofty  hill,  and  who  had  sat 
listening  in  terror  to  the  boom  of  the  cannon  and  the  rattle 
of  the  musketry,  scared  as  much  by  the  continuous  howl- 
ing of  her  dog,  which  she  regarded  as  coupled  with  some 
supernatural  cause,  as  by  the  deadly  "  thunders  in  the 
moors."  We  intimately  knew  another  who  witnessed  the 
battle,  though  in  no  very  favorable  circumstances  for  mi- 
nute observation,  from  the  Hill  of  Cromarty.  The  day,  he 
has  told  us,  was  drizzly  and  thick ;  and  on  reaching  the 
brow  of  the  hill,  where  he  found  a  vast  group  of  the  towns- 
folk already  assembled,  he  could  scarce  see  the  opposite 
land.  But  the  fog  gradually  cleared  away  ;  first  one  hill- 
top came  into  view,  and  then  another,  till  at  length  the  long 
range  of  coast,  from  the  opening  of  the  great  Caledonian 
Valley  to  the  promontory  of  Brugh-head,  was  dimly  visible 
through  the  haze.  A  little  after  noon  there  arose  a  sudden 
burst  of  round  white  cloud  from  the  moor  of  Culloden,  and 
then  a  second  bui-st  beside  it,  and  then  they  mingled  to- 
gether, and  went  rolling  slantways  on  the  wind  towards  the 
west ;  and  he  could  hear  the  rattle  of  the  smaller  firearms 
mingling  with  the  roar  of  the  artillery.  And  then,  in  what 
seemed  a  wonderfully  short  space  of  time,  the  cloud  dissi- 
pated and  disappeared,  and  the  boom  of  the  greater  guns 
ceased,  and  a  sharp  intermittent  patter  of  musketry  passed 
on  towards  Inverness.  Such  Avas  the  battle  of  Culloden, 
as  witnessed  by  the  writer's  maternal  grandfather,  then  a 
boy  in  his  fourteenth  year.  The  years  passed  by,  and  he 
and  the  generation  to  which  he  belonged  followed  the 
generation  that  had  gone  before  ;  and  then  the  front  rank 
in  the  general  march  to  the  tomb  came  to  be  occupied  by 
those  so  long  known  in  Scotland  as  the  Culloden-year 
people,  —  a  class  of  persons  who  stood  in  no  need  of  con- 
sulting records  and  registers  for  the  date  of  their  birth,  for 
the  battle  had  drawn,  as  if  with  the  sword-edge,  its  deep 
score  athwai-t  the  time,  so  that  all  took  note  of  it.  But  the 
Culloden-year  people  passed  from  the  stage  also ;  every 


THE    CENTENARY    OF   "  THE    FORTY-FIVE."  103 

season  in  its  flight  left  them  fewer  and  feebler ;  and  we 
now  see  the  front  rank  composed  of  their  children,  —  a 
ji^ray-haired  generation,  drooping  earthwards,  who  have 
already  spent  in  their  sojourn  the  term  so  long  since  fixed 
by  the  psalmist.  And  thus  —  as  wave  succeeds  wave,  storm- 
impelled,  from  the  ocean,  to  break  upon  the  shore  —  pass 
away  and  disappear  the  generations  of  man.  It  were  well, 
since  our  turn  must  come  next,  to  be  distinguishing  in 
time  between-  the  solid  and  the  evanescent,  —  the  things 
wliich  wear  out  like  the  old  Jacobitisra  of  the  past,  and 
become  sorry  shows  and  idle  mockeries,  and  the  things 
immortal  in  their  natures,  which  contumely  cannot  degrade 
nor  persecution  put  down. 


XIII. 

THE  HALF-QENTURY. 

The  first  fifty  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  terminated 
a  few  hours  ago,  and  we  have  now  entered  upon  the  sec- 
ond fifty.  As  last  night's  clock  struck  twelve,  the  most 
important  half-century  of  modern  history  came  to  its  close, 
and  a  half-century  which  threatens  to  be  scarce  less  event- 
ful began  its  course.  The  general  pi'ogress  made  by  Great 
Britain  during  the  lapsed  period  has  been  great  beyond 
all  former  precedent ;  but  there  is  one  special  department 
in  which  it  is  ominously,  fearfully  great ;  and  should  the 
same  ratio  of  increase  continue  throughout  the  succeeding 
fifty  years,  there  will  be  problems  for  our  country  to  solve, 
compared  with  which  those  of  the  present  day,  difficult 
as  they  may  seem,  may  be  regarded  as  the  tasks  of  children. 
At  the  commencement  of  the  half-century  just  closed,  the 
population  of  England  and  Scotland  united  did  not  much 


104  HISTORICAL   AND    BIOGRAPHICAL. 

exceed  eight  millions  of  souls  ;  in  1841  it  considerably  ex* 
ceeded  eighteen  millions  ;  and,  as  the  census  of  the  present 
year  will  by  and  by  show,  it  now  exceeds  twenty  millions. 
For  every  two  Britons  that  existed  on  their  native  soil 
when  the  century  began,  there  now  exist ^/ive,  and  in  fifty 
years  there  has  taken  place  in  the  population  an  increase 
of  14  hundred  and  fifty  per  cent. ;  and  at  the  close  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  should  the  same  rate  of  increase  con- 
tinue, the  soil  of  Great  Britain  will  be  encumbered  by  fifty 
millions  of  human  creatures.  How  the  privileges  of  pro- 
prietors, as  now  defined,  are  to  be  made  good  in  such  a 
state  of  things  —  should  such  a  state  of  things  ever  arrive 
—  against  the  pressing  claims  of  the  crowded  masses,  it  is 
at  present  ditficult  to  see  ;  but  in  this  element  of  increase 
alone  —  an  element  which  the  inadequate  expedient  of 
emigration,  that,  when  most  active,  sends  only  one  abroad 
for  every  additional  three  born  at  home,  may  in  vain  ex- 
pect to  counterbalance  —  we  recognize  a  disturbing  agent, 
suited,  even  did  it  stand  alone,  to  give  more  than  employ- 
ment enough  to  the  philanthropists  and  statesmen  of  the 
future.  Since  the  death  of  Chalmers  it  has  not  been  cus- 
tomary to  press  much  on  this  topic ;  but  considerably  less 
than  half  a  century  will  serve  to  show  how  entirely  he  was 
in  the  right  regarding  it. 

Fifty  years  form  a  large  proportion  of  the  period  as- 
signed to  man  ;  and  those  whose  powers  of  observation 
were  active  at  the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  and 
their  opportunities  of  exercising  them  considerable,  must 
now  be  far  advanced  in  life.  We,  however,  reckon  among 
our  readers  individuals  who  can  compare  from  personal 
observation  the  Scotland  of  1801  with  Scotland  in  tiie 
present  day,  and  who  can  tell  how,  over  wide  areas,  the 
face  of  the  country  has  changed.  We  ourselves,  though 
born  within  the  half-century,  are  acquainted  with  exten- 
sive localities  in  which,  within  our  recollection,  the  breadth 
of  corn-land  has  fully  doubled.  We  have  seen  it  slowly 
advancing  over  moory  waste  aud    brown   hillside,   till, 


THE   HALF-CENTURY.  105 

where  only  heath  and  ling  and  unproductive  brushwood 
used  to  grow,  every  autumn  mottles  over  the  landscape 
with  shocks  of  corn.  In  proportion  as  the  population  was 
increasing  were  the  means  of  their  support  in  these  locali- 
ties increasing  also.  But  it  was  chiefly  in  lowland  districts, 
or  in  districts  which  merely  bordered  on  the  Highlands, 
that  we  witnessed  this  change  for  the  better  taking  place. 
Much  of  the  Highlands  themselves  has  been  the  subject 
of  a  reverse  process.  During  the  last  half-century  many  a 
sheltered  glen  and  fertile  valley  have  given  their  cultivated 
patches  back  to  waste ;  and  where  human  habitations  once 
stood,  and  happy  communities  once  lived,  we  find  but 
moss-covered  ruins  and  the  solitude  of  a  desert.  And  it 
would  seem  as  if  this  state  of  management  had  already 
produced  its  crisis.  Where  the  corn-iand  has  more  than 
doubled  its  area,  or,  what  amounts  to  the  same  thing,  more 
than  doubled  its  produce,  there  is  food  and  employment 
for  the  more  than  doubled  population ;  whereas  in  the 
Highlands,  on  the  contrary,  famine  stares  the  unhappy 
inhabitants  full  in  the  face,  and  Lowland  Scotland  is 
told,  that,  unless  it  exert  itself  greatly  in  their  behalf, 
thousands  of  them  must  perish.  It  will  be  a  question  for 
the  next  half-century  practically  to  determine  whether,  as 
the  population  is  growing,  and  seems  destined  to  grow, 
the  Highlands  must  not  be  compelled  in  the  general  be- 
half to  sustain  their  own  portion  of  it.  There  is  another 
question  which  this  continued  increase  in  the  numbers  of 
the  people  will  at  length  render  all  potent.  Men  have 
wondered  how,  in  a  country  such  as  Cliina,  where  the  tone 
of  morality  is  low  and  the  government  is  corrupt,  education 
should  have  such  honors  and  privileges  attached  to  it,  that 
it  forms  the  sole  means  of  rising  into  place  and  afiiuence. 
The  true  secret  of  the  matter  is  to  be  read  in  the  fact  that 
China,  with  its  three  hundi'ed  millions  of  inhabitants,  is 
the  most  populous  country  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 
Ignorance,  therefore,  cannot  be  tolerated  in  China;  and 
knowledge,  including,  as  a  matter  of  course,  a  thorough 


106  HISTORICAL   AXD   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

acquaintance  with  the  arts  by  which  men  live,  is  at  a 
piemium  there.  However  unacquainted  with  what  most 
ennobles  man,  the  Chinese  cannot  be  left  ignorant  of  how 
—  to  use  their  own  homely  phrase  —  "men  are  to  get  their 
rice."  Were  the  case  otherwise,  they  would  of  necessity 
have  to  eat  one  another ;  and  so  in  this  vast  nation,  still  m 
some  respects  a  semibarbarous  one,  a  certain  measure  of 
education  is  universal ;  and  its  cheap  literature,  notwith- 
standing its  block-j^rinting  and  its  difficult  character,  is 
the  most  immense  in  the  world.  And,  on  a  similar  princi- 
ple, the  growing  population  of  Britain  will  force  upon 
the  country  the  question  of  an  adequate  education  for 
the  people.  It  is  difficult  to  overpeople  any  nation  with 
a  taught  and  industrious  race  of  men.  China  is  not  over- 
peopled with  its  three  hundred  millions.  Ireland,  that 
has  not  half  the  number  of  inhabitants  to  the  square  mile, 
and  the  Highlands  of  Scotland,  that  have  not  the  one- 
fortieth  part  the  number  to  the  square  mile,  are,  on  the 
contrary,  greatly  overpeopled  ;  and  the  difference  consists 
mainly  in  this,  that  whereas  the  Chinese  have,  with  all 
their  many  faults,  been  taught  how  to  "get  their  rice,"  the 
I^oor  Highlanders  and  the  Irish  have  not.  But,  in  this 
special  department  at  least,  the  extreme  limits  of  the  "let- 
alone  system  "  have  been  well-nigh  reached  ;  and  the  next 
half-century  will  see  knowledge  more  largely  spread  abroad, 
as  a  matter  of  necessity  in  which  the  very  existence  of 
the  nation  is  involved,  than  any  former  age  of  the  world. 
The  time  has  at  length  come  when  "many  shall  run  to 
and  fro,  and  knowledge  shall  be  increased." 

But  though  knowledge  during  the  last  half-century  did 
greatly  increase,  so  that  there  are  now  single  periodicals 
that  possess  a  larger  circle  of  readers  than  composed  in 
the  previous  half-century,  according  to  the  estimate  of 
Burke,  the  whole  reading  public  of  Great  Britain,  there 
is  another,  and,  as  has  been  generally  supposed,  antago- 
nistic principle,  that  has  increased  in  a  still  greater  ratio. 
Popery  reckons,  at  the  close  of  the  first  half  of  the  nine- 


THE   HALF-CENTURY.  107 

teenlh  century,  about  ten  times  the  number  of  adherents 
within  the  two  kingdoms  that  it  reckoned  when  the  cen- 
tury began.  In  producing  a  result  so  disastrous,  Puseyism 
has  no  doubt  had  its  share.  There  are  but  two  elements 
in  the  religious  world  of  Europe,  —  the  Popish  and 
the  Puritanic;  and  when,  some  fifteen  years  ago,  a  zeal- 
ous and  influential  section  of  English  Episcopalians  set 
themselves  to  reinvigorate  their  Church  by  revivingthe 
ceremonies  and  doctrines  of  a  Christianity  absolutely  gti- 
cient,  but  comparatively  modern,  —  for  it  dates  at  least 
three  hundred  years  later  than  the  age  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment,—  they  had  inevitably  committed  themselves,  little 
as  they  might  be  aware  of  the  fact  at  the  time,  to  the 
popish  element.  And  we  now  see  the  fruit  of  the  com- 
mittal in  the  perversions  which  are  taking  place  almost 
every  day  in  the  English  Chui'ch.  But  these,  though  of 
mighty  importance  to  Rome,  have  done  comparatively  little 
to  swell  her  numbers.  She  owes  the  vast  increase  which 
has  filled  the  dingier  dwellings  and  poorer  lanes  of  our 
larger  towns  with  her  votaries,  to  the  ovei^flowings  of  the 
miserable  population  of  Ireland.  The  Romish  Church  has 
been  no  doubt  much  encouraged  by  the  revival  of  the 
ancient  Christianity  within  the  pale  of  the  English  one ; 
and,  save  for  this  encouragement,  it  is  not  in  the  least 
likely  that  the  aggression  of  the  past  year  would  have 
taken  place ;  but  there  can  be  as  little  doubt  that  it  is  the 
l^oor,  neglected  Irish,  sacrificed  generation  after  generation 
to  the  Erastian  secularities  of  Protestant  Episcopacy,  and 
latterly  expatriated  by  the  potato  disease,  that  popery  owes 
its  increase  in  Britain.  There  will  be  work  enough  in  this 
department  for  all  the  Protestant  churches  of  the  country 
for  the  coming  half-century,  if  they  would  escape  defeat 
and  disgrace  at  their  own  doors.  The  last  half-century 
has  shown  how  difficult  it  is  to  calculate  on  the  strength 
of  chui'ches.  Its  fii'st  decade  witnessed  the  dethronement 
of  the  Pope  by  Napoleon  ;  its  terminating  decade,  his  flight 
from  Rome  under  the  terror  of  his  revolutionary  subjects. 


108  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

And  yet  popery  possesses  at  the  present  time  a  vast 
empire  in  the  minds  of  men ;  and  it  has  just  dared  to  per- 
petrate, in  consequence,  one  of  its  boldest  aggressions  on 
the  most  powerful  empire  in  the  world.  And  that  aggres- 
sion has  brought  out  the  great  strength  of  another  church, 
which,  about  the  time  of  the  passing  of  the  Reform  Bill, 
was  deemed  so  far  from  strong  that  statesmen  of  no  incon- 
siderable calibre  held  that  almost  any  sort  of  liberty  might 
be  taken  with  the  status  of  her  dignitaries,  or  with  her 
property.  It  seems  unquestionably  true,  that  the  present 
powerful  anti-popish  movement,  which  has  done  what  the 
zeal  of  Dissent  could  never  do,  —  stirred  the  nation  to  its 
very  depths,  —  has  arisen  among  the  English  Episcopa- 
lians, and  has  been  a  direct  consequence  of  what  the  Dis- 
sent of  England  and  the  Presbyterians  of  Scotland  regard 
as  a  very  inconsiderable  element  in  the  matter,  —  the  en- 
croachment on  the  domains  of  the  English  bishops.  We 
recognize  in  the  fact  the  correctness  of  tlie  impression 
made  upon  us  when  residing  for  a  short  time  in  England 
a  few  years  ago.  We  crossed  the  borders  in  the  belief, 
pretty  general,  we  are  disposed  to  think,  among  Scotchmen, 
that  the  active  power  of  nonconformity  in  the  southern 
kingdom  was  not  much  less  than  a  match  for  the  mere 
passive  power  of  its  Established  Episcopacy :  we  came 
away  full  under  the  conviction  that  the  two  powers  are  so 
very  unequal  that  it  is  scarce  wise  to  name  them  together. 
Established  Episcopacy  in  England  represents  the  soldiers 
of  a  vast  army  leaning  silently  on  their  arms ;  whereas 
Dissent  may  be  rather  likened  to  the  handful  led  by 
Gideon,  making  great  show  and  much  noise,  but,  unless 
miracles  be  wrought  in  their  behalf,  not  destined  to  make 
a  very  considerable  impression  on  the  country.  And  so 
evangelism  in  Scotland  has  a  much  larger  stake  in  the 
doctrinal  soundness  of  the  English  Church  than  it  seems 
to  be  aware  of.  Judging  from  present  appearances,  the 
religion  of  the  English  Church,  whatever  that  may  come 
to  be,  bids  fair  to  be  also  the  religion  of  the  English  Con- 


THE  HALF-CENTURY.  109 

stitution ;  and  therefore,  though  we  respect  many  of  the 
honest  and  good  men  who  seera  determined  at  the  present 
crisis  to  do  battle  both  with  popery  and  Established  Epis- 
copacy, we  cannot  think  they  have  by  any  means  fallen  on 
the  best  way  of  dealing  with  the  emergency.  They  will, 
we  are  afraid,  find  either  opponent  quite  a  match  for  them  ; 
and  should  they  set  themselves  to  fight  against  both  at 
once,  neither  Protestantism  nor  themselves  will  gain  any- 
thing by  their  coming  into  the  field. 

Another  mighty  increase  has  taken  place  during  the 
lapsed  half-century  in  the  numbers  of  the  poor.  It  is 
generally,  and,  we  think,  justly  held,  that  that  enormous 
amount  of  pauperism  in  Scotland  which,  at  the  time  of 
the  Revolution,  Fletcher  of  Saltoun  could  deem  so  formi- 
dable, was,  in  great  part  at  least,  a  result  of  the  previous 
persecution.  There  can  be  at  least  as  little  doubt  that  it 
was  the  termination  of  the  church  controversy,  not  in  an 
equitable  adjustment,  suited  to  place  under  the  control  of 
our  civil  courts  all  the  temporalities  of  the  church,  and 
under  her  courts  ecclesiastical  all  her  spiritualities,  but  in 
the  Disruption,  —  an  event  gilded  by  the  glory  of  con- 
scientious sacrifice,  but  not  the  less,  but  rather  the  more, 
on  that  account  a  calamity  to  the  country,  —  that  brought 
the  pauper  question  to  a  crisis,  and  saddled  upon  Scotland 
a  crushing  poor-law.  It  is  a  surely  not  uninstruetive  foct, 
that  the  proprietors  of  the  country  have  paid  for  the 
support  of  the  poor,  since  this  event,  a  sum  as  large  as 
would  have  purchased  all  their  patronages  three  times 
over, —  a  sum  which  previous  to  the  collision  they  had  not 
to  pay,  and  which,  had  they  urged  the  question  to  a 
difierent  issue,  they  would  not  have  to  pay  now.  The 
settlement  which  the  controversy  received  has  been,  eco- 
nomically at  least,  a  very  bad  settlement  for  them.  But 
thei'e  is  no  party  that  need  triumph  in  such  a  result. 
Free  Churchmen,  as  certainly  as  Established  Churchmen, 
suffer  in  consequence  ;  and  the  hard  problem  subjected  to 
the  country  through  the  event  it  may  take  the  whole  of 
10 


110  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

the  next  half-century  to  solve.  It  is  something,  however, 
that  it  is  already  compelling  attention,  and  that  Carlyle's 
"  Condition  of  the  People  Question  "  is  recognized  as  the 
great  question  of  the  day.  These  are  but  desultory  re- 
marks, and,  withal,  sufficiently  prosaic ;  but  the  magnitude 
of  the  subject  oppresses  us ;  nor  dare  we  attempt  condens- 
ing into  an  article  what,  could  we  devote  a  whole  volume 
to  the  survey,  would  require ^to  be  even  then  greatly 
condensed. 


XIV. 

THE  EOHOES  OF  THE   WORLD. 

DE.   CHALMEES. 

Has  the  reader  ever  heard  a  piece  of  heavy  ordnance 
fired  amid  the  mountains  of  our  country  ?  First  there  is 
the  ear-stunning  report  of  the  piece  itself, — the  prime 
mover  of  those  airy  undulations  that  travel  outwards,  circle 
beyond  circle,  towards  the  far  horizon ;  then  some  hoary 
precipice,  that  rises  tall  and  solemn  in  the  immediate 
neighborhood,  takes  up  the  sound,  and  it  comes  rolling 
back  from  its  rough  front  in  thunder,  like  a  giant  wave 
flung  far  seaward  from  the  rock  against  which  it  has  broken  ; 
then  some  more  distant  hill  becomes  vocal,  and  then  an- 
other, and  another,  and  anon  another ;  and  then  there  is 
a  slight  i^ause,  as  if  all  were  over,  —  the  undulations  are 
travelling  unbroken  along  some  flat  moor,  or  across  some 
expansive  lake,  or  over  some  deep  valley,  filled,  haply,  by 
some  long  withdrawing  arm  of  the  sea  ;  and  then  the  more 
remote  mountains  lift  up  their  voices  in  mysterious  mut- 
terings,  now  lower,  now  louder,  now  more  abrupt,  anon 
more  prolonged,  each,  as  it  recedes,  taking  up  the  tale  in 


THE   ECHOES    OF   THE   WORLD.  IH 

closer  succession  to  the  one  that  had  previously  spoken, 
till  at  length  their  distinct  utterances  are  lost  in  one  low, 
continuous  sound,  that  at  last  dies  out  amid  the  shattered 
peaks  of  the  desert  wilderness,  and  unbroken  stillness  settles 
over  the  scene,  as  at  first.  Through  a  scarce  voluntary 
exercise  of  that  faculty  of  analogy  and  comparison  so  nat- 
ural to  the  human  mind,  that  it  converts  all  the  existences 
of  the  physical  world  into  forms  and  expressions  of  the 
world  moral  and  intellectual,  we  have  oftener  than  once 
thought  of  the  phenomenon,  and  its  attendant  results,  as 
strikingly  representative  of  effects  produced  by  the  death 
of  Chalmers.  It  is  an  event  which  has,  we  find,  rendered 
vocal  the  echoes  of  the  world;  and  they  are  still  returning 
upon  us,  after  measured  intervals,  according  to  the  distan- 
ces. First,  as  if  from  the  nearer  rocks  and  precipices,  they 
arose  from  the  various  towns  and  cities  of  Scotland  that 
possess  their  periodicals;  then  from  the  great  southern 
metropolis,  and  the  other  towns  and  cities  of  England,  as 
if  from  the  hills  immediately  beyond  ;  from  Ireland  next; 
and  next  from  France  and  Geneva,  and  the  European  Con- 
tinent generally.  And  then  there  was  a  slight  pause.  The 
tidings  were  passing  in  silence,  without  meeting  an  intelli- 
gent ear  on  which  to  fall,  across  the  wide  expanse  of  the 
Atlantic.  And  then,  as  if  from  more  distant  mountains, 
came  the  voices  of  the  States,  and  the  colonies,  and  the 
West  Indian  Islands.  It  was  no  uninteresting  task  to  un- 
robe from  their  close  brown  covers,  that  spake  in  color 
and  form  of  a  foreign  country,  the  Transatlantic  journals, 
and  read  tribute  after  tribute  to  the  worth  and  intellectual 
greatness  of  the  departed ;  and  to  hear  of  the  funeral  ser- 
mons preached  far  away,  on  the  very  verge  of  the  civilized 
world,  amid  half-open  clearings  in  the  vast  forest,  or  in 
hastily-erected  towns  and  villages  that  but  a  few  twelve- 
months before  had  no  existence.  Nor  have  all  the  echoes 
of  the  event  returned  to  us  even  yet.  They  have  still  to 
arise  from,  if  we  may  so  express  ourselves,  the  more  dis- 
tant peaks  of  the  landscape,  —  from  the  Eastern  Indies, 


112  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

Australia,  and  the  antipodes.  Every  more  remote  echo, 
while  it  indicates  how  great  the  distance  which  the  original 
undulations  have  traversed,  and  how  wide  the  area  which 
they  fill,  serves  also  of  necessity  to  demonstrate  the  far- 
piercing  character  and  greatness  of  the  event  which  first 
set  them  in  motion.  Dryden,  in  describing  the  grief  occa- 
Bioned  by  the  death  of  some  august  and  "gracious  monai'ch," 
describes  it  as  bounded,  with  all  its  greatness  and  extent, 
by  his  own  dominions :  — 


'  Thus,  when  some  great  and  gracious  monarch  dies, 
Soft  whispers  first  and  mournful  murmurs  rise 
Among  the  sad  attendants ;  then  the  sound 
Soon  gathers  voice,  and  spreads  the  news  around 
Through  town  and  country,  till  the  dreadful  blast 
Is  blown  to  distant  colonics  at  last." 


There  have  been  no  such  limitations  to  the  sorrow  for 
Chalmers.  The  United  States  and  the  Continent  have 
sympathizingly  responded  —  of  one  mind  in  this  matter,  as 
of  one  blood,  with  ourselves  —  to  the  regrets  of  Britain 
and  the  colonies.  We  have  few  men  left  whose  names  so 
completely  fill  the  world  as  that  of  Chalmers. 

The'  group  of  great  men  to  which  Thomas  Chalmers 
belonged  has  now  well-nigh  disappeared.  Goldsmith  has 
written  an  ingenious  essay  to  show  that  the  "  rise  or  decline 
of  literature  is  little  dependent  on  man,  but  results  rather 
from  the  vicissitudes  of  nature."  The  larger  minds,  he 
remarks,  are  not  unfrequently  ushered  into  the  world  in 
groups ;  and  after  they  have  passed  away,  there  intervene 
wide  periods  of  repose,  in  which  there  are  only  minds  of  a 
lower  order  produced.  "  Some  ages  have  been  remark- 
able," he  says,  "for  the  production  of  men  of  extraordinary 
stature;  others  for  producing  particular  animals  in  great 
abundance ;  some  for  excessive  plenty ;  others,  again,  for 
seemingly  causeless  famine.  Nature,  which  shows  herself 
BO  very  different  in  her  visible  productions,  must  surely 


THE  ECHOES   OP  THE   WORLD.  113 

differ  also  from  herself  in  the  production  of  minds ;  and, 
while  she  astonishes  one  age  witli  the  strength  and  stature 
of  a  Milo  or  a  Maximian,  may  bless  another  with  the  wisdom 
of  a  Plato  or  the  goodness  of  an  Antonine."  In  glancing 
over  the  history  of  modern  Europe,  and  more  especially 
that  of  the  British  empire,  civil  and  literary,  one  can  scarce 
fail  to  mark  a  cycle  of  production  of  this  character,  which 
now  seems  far  advanced  in  its  second  revolution.  The 
seventeenth  century  was  in  this  country  peculiarly  a  period 
of  great  men.  Cromwell  and  Shakspeare  were  so  far 
contemporary,  that  when,  little  turned  of  fifty,  the  poet 
lay  on  his  deathbed,  the  future  Lord  Protector,  then  a  lad 
of  seventeen,  was  riding  beside  his  father,  to  enter  as  a 
student  tlie  University  of  Cambridge  ;  and  the  precocious 
Milton,  though  still  younger,  was,  we  find,  quite  mature 
enough  to  estimate  the  real  stature  of  the  giant  that  had 
fallen,  and  to  deplore  his  premature  death  in  stanzas  des- 
tined to  live  forever.  And  when,  in  after  life,  the  one 
great  man  sat  writing,  to  the  dictation  of  the  other,  the 
well-known  noble  letter  to  Louis  in  behalf  of  Continental 
Protestantism,  the  mathematician,  Isaac  Newton,  sat  en- 
sconced among  his  old  books  in  the  garret  at  Grantham ; 
the  metaphysician,  John  Locke,  was  engaged  at  Oxford  in 
his  profound  cogitation  on  the  nature  and  faculties  of  mind  ; 
John  Bunyan  was  a  soldier  of  the  Commonwealth ;  Cowley 
was  studying  botany  in  Kent ;  Butler  was  pouring  forth 
his  vast  profusion  of  idea  in  the  dwelling  of  Sir  Samuel 
Luke ;  Dryden,  at  the  ripe  age  of  twenty-seven,  was  mak- 
ing his  first  rude  efforts  in  composition  in  Trinity  College  ; 
Sir  Matthew  Hale  was  administering  justice  in  London, 
and  planning  his  great  law  Avorks ;  and,  though  Hampden 
and  Selden  were  both  in  their  graves  at  the  time,  the  for- 
mer, had  he  escaped  the  fatal  shot,  would  still  have  been 
in  but  middle  life,  and  the  latter  was  but  four  years  dead. 
The  group  was  assuredly  a  very  marvellous  one.  It  passed 
away,  however,  like  all  that  is  of  eai'th ;  and  there  arose 
that  other  group  of  men,  admirable  in  their  proportions, 
10* 


114  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

but  of  decidedly  lower  stature,  that  all  in  any  degree 
acquainted  with  English  literature  recognize  as  the  wits 
of  Queen  Anne.  To  this  lower  but  very  exquisite  group 
the  Popes,  Swifts,  and  Addisons,  the  Gays,  Parnells,  and 
Priors  belong.  It  also  passed ;  and  a  still  lower  group 
arose,  with,  it  is  true,  a  solitary  Johnson  and  Burke  raising 
their  head  and  shoulders  above  the  crowd,  but  attaining 
not,  at  least  in  the  mass,  to  the  statui-e  of  their  immediate 
predecessors.  And  they  themselves  were  well  aware  of 
their  inferiority.  Is  the  reader  possessed  of  a  copy  of  An- 
derson's "Poets?"  From  its  chronological  arrangement, 
it  illustrates  very  completely  the  progress  of  that  first  great 
cycle  of  production  from  the  higher  to  the  lower  minds  to 
which  we  refer  ;  and  with  the  works  of  the  Jenyns,  the 
Whiteheads,  the  Cottons,  and  the  Blacklocks,  the  collec- 
tion closes.  And  then  the  cycle,  as  if  the  moving  spring 
had  been  suddenly  wound  up  to  its  original  rigidity,  begins 
anew.  The  gigantic  figure  of  Napoleon  appears  as  the 
centre  of  a  great  historic  group ;  and  we  see  ranged  around 
him  the  tall  figures  of  statesmen  such  as  Pitt  and  Fox; 
of  soldiers  such  as  Soult,  Ney,  and  Wellington  ;  of  popular 
agitators  such  as  Cobbett  and  O'Connell ;  of  theological 
writers  and  leaders  such  as  Hall,  Foster,  and  Andrew 
Thomson ;  and  of  literary  men  such  as  Goethe,  Chateau- 
briand, Sir  Walter  Scott,  and  Wordsworth.  The  group  is 
very  decidedly  one  of  men  large  and  massy  of  stature  ; 
and  to  this  group,  great  among  the  greatest,  Thomas  Chal- 
mers belonged.  It  has,  we  repeat,  nearly  passed  away. 
Wellington,  Wordsworth,  and  Chateaubriand  —  all  weU 
stricken  in  years,  —  turned  very  considerably,  the  young- 
est of  them,  of  the  threescore  and  ten  —  alone  survive. 
Immediately  beneath  these,  and  bearing  to  them  a  relation 
very  similar  to  that  which  the  wits  and  statesmen  of  Queen 
Anne  bore  to  the  Miltons  and  Cromwells,  their  predeces- 
sors, stands  a  group,  the  largest  of  their  day,  including  as 
politicians  the  Peels  and  Russells,  and  as  literary  men  the 
Lockharts  and  Macaulays,  of  the  present  time.     Happily 


THE  ECHOES   OP  THE   WORLD.  115 

the  Free  Church,  though  its  great  leader  be  removed,  does 
not  lack  at  least  its  proportional  number  of  these.  They 
niay  UK3  uescribed  generally,  with  reference  to  their  era, 
as  men  turned  of  forty ;  and,  so  far  as  may  be  judged 
from  the  present  appearance  of  things,  the  younger  and 
succeeding  group,  just  entered  on  the  stage,  are  composed, 
as  during  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  of  men  of  a  third 
class,  that  seem  well-nigh  as  inferior  in  height  and  muscle 
to  those  01  the  second,  as  the  second  are  inferior  in  bulk, 
strength,  and  massiveness  to  those  of  the  first.  The  third 
stage  of  the  second  cycle  of  production  is,  it  would  ap- 
pear, already  full  in  view.  In  the  poetical  department  of 
our  literature  this  state  of  things  is  strikingly  apparent. 
Ere  the  Cowpers  and  Burnses  arose  to  herald  the  new  and 
great  era,  the  latter  half  of  the  last  century  had  its  War- 
tons  and  its  Langhorns,  —  true  and  sweet  poets,  but,  it 
must  be  confessed,  of  somewhat  minute  proportions.  The 
present  time  has  its  Moirs  and  its  Alfred  Tennysons;  and 
they  are  true  poets  also,  but  poets  on  a  not  large  scale,  — 
decidedly  men  of  the  third  era. 

In  glancing  over  the  various  tributes  to  the  memory  of 
Chalmers,  one  is  struck  with  a  grand  distinction  by  which 
they  may  be  ranged  into  two  classes.  Belonging,  as  he 
did,  to  two  distinct  worlds,  —  the  worlds  literaiy  and 
religious,  —  we  find  estimates  of  his  character  and  career 
made  by  representatives  of  both.  In  the  one,  the  appre- 
ciation hinges,  as  on  a  pivot,  on  a  certain  great  turning 
incident  in  his  life ;  in  the  other,  there  is  either  no  reference 
made  to  this  incident,  or  the  principles  on  which  it  occurred 
are  represented  as  of  a  common  and  obvious,  and  not  very 
important  character.  Is  it  not  truly  strange,  that  the 
most  influential  event  that  can  possibly  take  place  in  the 
history  of  individual  man  —  which  has  lain  at  the  found- 
ation of  the  greatest  revolutions  of  which  the  annals  of 
the  species  furnish  any  record,  and  which  constitutes  the 
main  objective  theme  of  revelation  —  should  be  scarce  at 
all  ap])reciated,  even  in  its  palpable  chai'acter  as  a  fact^ 


116  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL 

by  the  great  bulk  of  the  acutest  and  most  intelligeut 
writers  of  the  present  age  ?  That  change  in  the  heart 
and  life  which  sent  the  apostles  forth  of  old  to  Christianize 
the  world,  and  the  Reformers  at  a  later  time  to  re-Chris- 
tianize it,  —  which,  forming  the  charm  of  the  successes  of 
Cromwell,  preserved  to  Britain  its  free  Constitution,  and 
which  altered  in  toto  the  destinies  of  Chalmers,  —  that 
change,  we  say,  is  rightly  appreciated,  in  even  its  obvious 
character  as  a  fact,  by  none  of  our  purely  literary  men  ; 
or,  at  least,  if  we  must  make  one  exception,  by  Thomas 
Carlyle  alone.  It  constitutes  a  mighty  spring  of  action,— 
by  far  the  mightiest  in  this  world,  —  of  which  the  rest  are 
ignorant.  Regarded  in  this  point  of  view,  the  following 
extract  from  the  "  People's  Journal" —  a  periodical  con- 
ducted chiefly,  it  is  understood,  by  Unitarians  —  is  not 
uninstructive.  It  refers  to  the  conversion  of  Chalmers,  and 
describes  that  event  as  occurring  on  a  few  obvious  com- 
monplace principles :  — 

"  A  new  era  in  the  development  of  Chalmers'  mind  commences 
with  bis  engagement  upon  the  article  '  Christianity.'  The  powerful 
devotional  tendency  of  his  mind  had  hitherto,  to  all  appearance, 
lain  dormant.  The  protracted  and  unintermitting  attention  to  re- 
ligious questions  which,  in  the  compilation  of  that  essay,  he  was 
compelled  to  bestow,  was  favorable  to  the  formation  of  a  devotional 
habit  of  mind  in  one  who,  like  all  men  of  poetical  tempei'ament, 
was  eminently  liable  to  take  the  tone  and  color  of  his  mind  from 
the  element  in  which  he  lived.  The  Leslie  controversy,  too,  had 
brid<ifed  over  the  sulf  wliioh  had  hitherto  intervened  between  the 
higher  orders  of  minds  among  the  literati  and  the  orthodox  clergy 
of  Scotland.  The  Dugald  Stewarts  and  the  JefTreys  on  the  one 
hand,  the  Moncreiffs  and  Thomsons  on  the  other,  had,  while  acting 
ji.  concert,  learned  to  know  and  appreciate  each  other's  peculiar 
merits.  The  sentiment  of  political  independence,  and  that  liberal 
tolerance,  the  most  uniform  feature  of  superior  minds,  had  infused 
permanent  feelings  of  mutual  good-will  into  minds  which  by  their  or- 
ganization were  irreconcilably  different.  Chalmers,  wlio  had  been 
thrown  among  the  purely  intellectual  class  in  a  great  measure  by 
the  accident  of  position,  was  now  attracted  to  the  religious  class, 


THE  ECHOES  OP  THE  WORLD.  117 

with  whom  his  natural  sympathies  were,  if  anything,  still  greater. 
He  devoted  himself  more  exclusively  to  the  duties  of  his  ministerial 
office,  and,  carrying  Into  the  pulpit  the  same  buoyant  enthusiasm, 
the  same  Herculean  powers,  he  soon  became  one  of  the  most  dis-- 
tinguished  inculcators  of  '  evangelical  *  views  of  religion." 

Among  the  numerous  funeral  sermons  of  which  the 
death  of  Chalmers  has  proved  the  occasion,  we  know  not  a 
finer,  abler,  or  better-toned  than  one  of  the  Transatlantic 
discourses.  It  is  from  the  pen  of  Dr.  Sprague,  of  Albany, 
United  States,  so  well  known  in  this  country  by  his  work 
on  revivals.  His  estimate  of  the  great  change  which  not 
only  expanded  the  heart,  but  also  in  no  slight  degree 
developed  the  intellect,  of  Chalmers,  differs  widely,  as 
might  be  expected  from  the  general  tone  of  his  writings, 
from  that  of  the  Unitarian  in  the  "People's  Journal."  It 
is  strange  on  what  analogies  men  ingenious  in  misleading 
themselves  when  great  principles  are  at  stake  contrive  to 
fall.  "We  have  lately  seen  Cromwell's  love  of  the  Scrip- 
tures, and  his  diligence,  according  to  the  divine  precept, 
in  searching  them,  attributed  to  the  mere  military  instinct, 
gratified,  in  his  case,  by  the  warlike  stories  of  the  Old 
Testament,  as  the  resembling  instinct  was  gratified  in  that 
of  Alexander  the  Great  by  the  stories  of  the  Illiad. 

"  He  [Dr.  Chalmers]  removed  to  Kilmeny,"  says  Dr.  Sprague, "  in 
1803,  where  he  labored  for  several  years,  and  where  occurred  at  least 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  events  of  his  life.  It  was  nothing  less, 
as  he  himself  regarded  it,  than  a  radical  change  of  character.  Pre- 
vious to  thai  period  he  seems  to  have  looked  upon  the  duties  of  his 
profession  as  a  mere  matter  of  official  drudgery  ;  and  not  a  small 
part  of  his  time  was  devoted  to  science,  particularly  to  the  mathema- 
tics, to  which  his  taste  more  especially  inclined  him.  But  having  been 
requested  to  furnish  an  article  for  the  "  Edinburgh  EncyclopaBdia  " 
on  the  evidences  of  divine  revelation,  in  the  course  of  the  investi- 
gation to  which  he  was  led  in  the  prosecution  of  this  effort  he  was 
brought  into  communion  with  Christianity  in  all  its  living  and  trans- 
forming power.  He  not  only  became  fully  satisfied  of  its  truth,  of 
which  before  he  had  had  only  some  indefinite  and  inoperative  im- 


118  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

pression,  but  he  discovered  clearly  its  high  practical  relations  ;  he 
surrendered  himself  to  its  teachings  with  the  spirit  of  a  little  child ; 
he  reposed  in  its  gracious  provisions  with  the  confidence  of  a  pen- 
itent sinner ;  and  from  that  time  to  his  dying  hour  he  gloried  in 
nothing  save  in  the  cross  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  He  stood  forth 
before  the  world  strangely  unlike  what  he  had  ever  been  belbre. 
There  was  a  sacred  fervor,  an  unearthly  majesty,  in  all  his  utterings 
and  all  his  writings.  Scotland,  Britain,  the  world,  soon  came  to  look 
at  him  with  wonder,  as  one  of  the  brightest  luminaries  of  his  time,  — 
as  destined  to  exert  a  controlling  influence  upon  the  age,  if  not  to  work 
an  epoch  in  the  world's  history.  It  was  quickly  found  that  there  was 
a  far  higher  effect  produced  by  his  ministrations  than  mere  admira- 
tion, —  that  the  sword  of  the  Spirit,  wielded  with  such  unwonted 
energy,  was  doing  its  legitimate  work  ;  for  worldliness  could  not  bear 
his  rebuke ;  scepticism  could  not  stand  erect  in  his  presence  ;  while 
a  pure  and  living  Christianity  was  constantly  reproducing  itself  in 
the  hearts  of  some  one  or  other  of  his  enchained  hearers." 

Dr.  Sprague's  estimate  of  the  intellectual  character  of 
Chalmers  seems  eminently  just,  and,  formed  at  the  dis- 
tance of  more  than  three  thousand  miles  from  the  more 
immediate  scene  of  Chalmers'  personal  labors,  —  for  dis- 
tance in  space  has  greatly  the  effect  in  such  matters  of 
distance  in  time,  —  it  maybe  regarded  as  foreshadowing 
the  judgment  of  posterity. 

"  The  intellectual  character  of  Dr.  Chalmers  was  distinguished 
chiefly  by  its  wonderful  combination  of  the  imaginative,  the  profound, 
and  the  practical.  If  there  be  on  earth  a  mind  constituted  with 
greater  power  of  imagination  than  his,  we  know  not  where  to  look 
for  it.  And  because  he  was  so  preeminent  in  respect  to  this  quality, 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that  some  have  underrated  his  more  strictly 
intellectual  powers,  —  his  ability  to  comprehend  the  more  distant 
bearings  of  things,  or  to  grapple  with  the  subtilties  of  abstract  phi- 
losophy ;  and  they  have  reached  their  false  conclusion  on  the  ground 
that  it  were  impossible  that  a  mind  so  higlily  gifted  in  one  respect 
should  be  alike  distinguished  in  the  other.  But  if  Iiis  productions 
may  be  allowed  to  speak  for  him,  I  think  it  will  be  difficult  to  show 
that  he  was  not  efpially  at  home  in  the  depths  as  on  the  heights; 
and  some  of  his  works,  particularly  that  on  Natural  Theolog)',  ex- 


THE   ECHOES   OF  THE   WORLD.  119 

hibit  the  two  qualities  blended  in  beautiful  proportions.  I  hesitate 
not  to  say,  that  any  man  who  could  reason  like  Chalmers  and  do 
nothing  else,  or  any  man  who  could  soar  like  Chalmers  and  do 
nothing  else,  or  any  man  who  could  contrive  and  execute  like  Chal- 
mers, as  is  evinced  by  his  connection  with  the  whole  Free  Church 
movement,  and  do  nothing  else,  would  be  a  great  man  in  any  country 
or  in  any  age ;  but  the  union  of  the  several  faculties  in  such  propor- 
tion and  such  degree  constitutes  a  character  at  once  unparalleled 
and  imperishable." 

Among  the  various  references  to  this  genius  of  Chalmers 
for  the  practical,  which,  according  to  Sprague,  would  have 
constituted  him  a  great  man  even  had  it  been  his  only 
faculty,  we  know  not  a  finer  or  more  picturesque  than 
that  which  we  find  in  a  truly  admirable  article  in  a  late 
number  of  the  "North  British  Review."  The  picture  — 
for  a  picture  it  is,  and  a  very  admirable  one  —  exhibits 
spocially  the  inspiriting  effect  of  the  quality  in  a  time  of 
perplexity  and  trial.  It  is  when  dangers  run  high  that  the 
voice  of  the  true  leader  is  known :  the  storm  in  its  hour 
of  dire  extremity  exhibits  the  skill  of  the  accomplished 
pilot. 

"  When  the  courts  of  law  revoked,"  says  the  reviewer,  "  the  lib- 
erty of  the  Scottish  Church,  much  as  he  loved  its  old  Establishment, 
much  as  he  loved  his  Edinburgh  professorship,  and  much  more  as  he 
loved  his  two  hundred  churches,  with  a  single  movement  of  his  pen 
he  signed  them  all  away.  He  had  reached  his  grand  climacteric ; 
and  many  thought  that,  smitten  down  by  the  shock,  his  gray  hairs 
would  descend  in  sorrow  to  the  grave  :  it  was  time  for  him  "  to  break 
his  mighty  heart  and  die."  But  they  httle  knew  the  man.  They 
forgot  that  spirit  which,  like  the  trodden  palm,  had  so  often  sprung 
erect  and  stalwart  from  a  crushing  overthrow.  We  saw  him  that 
November.  We  saw  him  in  its  Convocation,  —  the  sublimcst  aspect 
in  which  we  ever  saw  the  noble  man.  The  ship  was  fast  aground  ; 
and  as  they  looked  over  the  bulwarks,  through  the  mist  and  the 
breakers,  all  on  board  seemed  anxious  and  sad.  Never  had  they 
felt  prouder  of  their  old  first-rate,  and  never  had  she  ploughed  a 
braver  path,  than  when,  contrary  to  all  the  markings  In  the  chart, 
and  all  the  experience  of  former  voyages,  she  dashed  on  this  fatal 


120  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

bar.  The  stoutest  were  dismayed ;  and  many  talked  of  taking  to 
the  fragments,  and,  one  by  one,  trying  for  the  nearest  shore  ;  when, 
calmer  because  of  the  turmoil,  and  with  the  exultation  of  one  who 
saw  safety  ahead,  the  voice  of  this  dauntless  veteran  was  heard 
propounding  his  confident  scheme.  Cheered  by  his  assurance,  and 
inspired  by  his  example,  they  set  to  work ;  and  that  dreary  winter 
was  spent  in  constructing  a  vessel  with  a  lighter  draught  and  a  sim- 
pler rigging,  but  large  enough  to  carry  every  true-hearted  man  who 
ever  trod  the  old  ship's  timbers.  Never  did  he  work  more  blithely, 
and  never  was  there  more  of  athletic  ardor  in  his  looks,  than  during 
the  six  months  that  this  ark  was  building,  though  every  stroke  of 
the  mallet  told  of  blighted  hopes,  and  defeated  toil,  and  the  unknown 
sea  before  him.  And  when  the  signal-psalm  announced  the  new 
vessel  launched,  and  leaving  the  old  galley  high  and  dry  on  the 
breakers,  the  banner  unfurled,  and  showing  the  covenanting  blue 
still  spotless,  and  the  symbolic  bush  still  burning,  few  will  forget  the 
renovation  of  his  youth,  and  the  joyful  omen  of  his  shining  counte- 
nance. It  was  not  only  the  rapture  of  bis  prayers,  but  the  radiance 
of  his  spirit,  which  repeated,  '  God  is  our  refuge.'  It  is  something 
heart-stirring  to  see  the  old  soldier  take  the  field,  or  the  old  trader 
exerting  every  energy  to  retrieve  his  shattered  fortunes ;  but  far 
the  finest  spectacle  of  the  moulting  eagle  was  Chalmers,  with  his 
hoary  locks,  beginning  life  anew.  But,  indeed,  he  was  not  old. 
They  who  can  fill  their  veins  with  every  hopeful,  healthful  thing 
around  them,  —  those  who  can  imbibe  the  sunshine  of  the  future, 
and  transfuse  life  from  realities  not  come  as  yet,  —  their  blood  need 
never  freeze.  And  his  bosom  heaved  with  all  the  newness  of  the 
Church's  life,  and  all  the  bigness  of  the  Church's  plans.  And,  best 
of  all,  those  who  wait  upon  the  Lord  are  always  young.  This  was 
the  reason  why  on  the  morning  of  that  exodus  he  did  not  totter 
forth  from  the  old  Establishment  a  blank  and  palsy-stricken  man, 
but,  with  flashing  eye,  snatched  up  his  palmer-stafT,  and,  as  he  stamped 
it  on  the  ground,  all  Scotland  shook,  and  answered  with  a  deep 
God-speed  to  the  giant  gone  on  pilgrimage." 

Of  all  the  tributes  to  the  memory  of  Chalmers  which 
we  have  yet  seen,  one*  of  at  once  the  ablest  and  most 
generous  is  that  by  Dr.  Alexander  of  this  city.^     Belong- 

1  A  Discourse  on  the  Qualities  and  Worth  of  Thomas  Chalmers,  D.D.  LL.D,, 
etc.    By  William  Lindsay  Alexander,  D.D. 


THE  ECHOES   OF  THE  WORLD.  121 

ir\g  to  a  different  family  of  the  church  catholic  from  that 
whose  principles  the  illustrious  deceased  maintained  and 
defended,  and  at  issue  with  him  on  points  which  neither 
deemed  unimportant,  the  doctor  has  yet  come  forward,  in 
the  name  of  their  common  Christianity,  to  record  his  es- 
timate of  his  character  and  his  sorrow  for  his  loss.  It  was 
one  of  the  points  worthy  of  notice  in  Chalmers,  that  none 
of  his  opponents  in  any  controversy  settled  down  into 
persona]  enemies.  We  saw,  among  the  thousands  who 
attended  his  funeral,  Principal  Lee,  with  whom  he  had  the 
controversy  regarding  the  Moderatorship ;  Dr.  Wardlaw, 
his  opponent  in  the  great  controversy  on  establishments ; 
and  the  carriage  of  the  Lord  Provost,  as  representative  of 
the  Provost  himself,  with  whom  he  had  the  controversy 
regarding  the  Edinburgh  churches  and  their  amount  of 
accommodation,  and  who  was  on  business  in  London  at 
the  time.  And  to  this  trait,  and  to  what  it  indicated,  Dr. 
Alexander  finely  refers.  The  doctor  was  one  of  Chalmers* 
St.  Andrew's  pupils ;  and  his  opportunities  of  acquaint- 
anceship at  that  period  furnish  one  or  two  singularly  in- 
teresting anecdotes  illustrative   of  the  character  of  the 


"  Sometimes  it  was  my  lot  to  be  his  companion,"  says  the  doctor, 
"  to  some  wretched  hovel,  where  I  have  seen  Lira  take  bis  seat  by 
the  side  of  some  poor  child  of  want  and  weakness,  and  patiently, 
affectionatel}',  and  earnestly  strive  to  convey  Into  his  darkened  mind 
some  ray  of  truth  that  might  guide  him  to  safety  and  to  God.  On 
such  occasions  it  was  marvellous  to  observe  with  what  simplicity  of 
speech  that  great  mind  would  utter  truth.  One  instance  of  this  I 
must  be  allowed  to  mention.  The  scene  was  a  low,  dirty  hovel, 
over  whose  damp  and  uneven  floor  It  was  difficult  to  walk  without 
stumbling,  and  Into  which  a  small  window,  coated  with  dust,  ad- 
mitted hardly  enough  of  light  to  enable  an  eye  unaccustomed  to  the 
gloom  to  discern  a  single  object.  A  poor  old  woman,  bedridden, 
and  almost  blind,  who  occupied  a  miserable  bed  opposite  the  fire- 
I)lace,  was  the  object  of  the  doctor's  visit.  Seating  himself  by 
her  side,  he  entered  at  once,  after  a  few  general  inquiries  as  to  her 
health,  etc..  Into  religious  conversation  with  her.  Alas !  it  seemed 
^11 


122  HISTORICAL  AND  BIOGRAPHICAL. 

all  in  vain.  The  mind  -whicli  he  strove  to  enlighten  had  been  so 
long  closed  and  dark  that  It  appeared  impossible  to  thrust  into  it  a 
single  ray  of  light.  Still,  on  the  part  of  the  woman  there  was  an 
evident  anxiety  to  lay  hold  upon  something  of  what  he  was  telling 
her;  and,  encouraged  by  this,  he  persevered,  plying  her,  to  use  his 
own  expression,  with  the  offers  of  the  gospel,  and  urging  her  to  trust 
in  Christ.  At  length  she  said, '  Ah,  Sir,  I  would  fain  do  as  you  bid 
me,  but  I  dinnaken  how  :  how  can  I  trust  in  Christ  ?  *  '  Oh,  woman,' 
was  his  expressive  answer,  in  the  dialect  of  the  district,  'just  lippen 
to  Him.*  '  Eh,  Sir,'  was  her  reply, '  and  is  that  a'  ?  '  '  Yes,  yes,' 
was  his  gratified  response ;  'just  lippen  to  Him,  and  lean  on  Him, 
and  you'll  never  perish.'  To  some,  perhaps,  this  language  may  be 
obscure ;  but  to  that  poor,  blind,  dying  woman  it  was  as  light  from 
heaven  ;  it  guided  her  to  the  knowledge  of  the  Saviour ;  and  there 
is  good  reason  to  beHeve  it  Wcis  the  instrument  of  ultimately  con- 
ducting her  to  heaven." 

We  had  marked  for  quotation  various  passages  in  this 
admirable  discourse,  unequalled,  we  hold,  by  aught  that 
has  yet  appeared,  as  an  analysis  of  the  mental  and  moral 
constitution  of  him  whom  Dr.  Alexander  at  once  elo- 
quently and  justly  describes  as  "a  man  of  brilliant  genius, 
of  lovely  character,  of  sincere  devotion,  of  dignified  and 
untiring  activity,  the  most  eminent  preacher  our  country  has 
produced,  the  greatest  Scotchmen  the  nineteenth  century 
has  yet  seen."  We  have,  however,  much  more  than  ex- 
hausted our  space,  and  so  must  be  content  for  the  present 
with  recommending  to  our  readers  an  attentive  perusal  of 
the  whole.  One  passage,  however,  we  cannot  deny  our- 
selves the  pleasure  of  extracting.  It  meets,  we  think,  very 
completely,  a  frequent  criticism  on  one  of  the  peculiarities 
of  Chalmera,  and  shows  that  what  has  been  often  in- 
stanced as  a  defect  was  in  reality  a  rarely  attainable 
excellence :  — 

"  In  handling  his  subjects  Dr.  Chalmers  displayed  vast  oratorical 
power.  He  usually  selected  one  great  truth  or  one  great  practical 
duty  for  consideration  at  a  time.  This  he  would  place  distinctly 
before  his  hearers,  and  then  illustrate,  defend,  and  enforce  it  through- 
out Ms  discourse,  again  and  again  bringing  it  up  before  them,  and 


THE  ECHOES   OF  THE  WORLD.  123 

nrging  it  apon  them.  By  some  this  has  been  regarded  as  a  defect 
rather  than  a  merit  in  his  pulpit  addresses ;  and  it  has  been  ascribed 
to  some  peculiarity  of  his  mind,  in  virtue  of  which  he  has  been  sup- 
posed incapable  of  turning  away  from  a  subject  when  once  he  had 
hold  on  it,  or,  rather,  it  had  laid  hold  on  him.  I  believe  this  criticism 
to  have  been  quite  erroneous.  That  his  practice  in  this  respect  was 
not  an  accidental  result  of  some  mental  peculiarity,  but  was  purposely 
and  designedly  followed  by  him,  I  know  from  his  own  assurance  ;  in- 
deed, he  used  publicly  to  recommend  it  to  his  students  as  a  practice 
sanctioned  by  some  of  the  greatest  masters  in  oratory,  especially  the 
great  parliamentary  orator  Charles  James  Fox ;  and  the  only  reason, 
I  believe,  why  it  is  not  more  frequently  adopted,  is,  that  it  is  immeas- 
urably more  difficult  to  engage  the  minds  of  an  audience  by  a 
discourse  upon  one  theme,  than  by  a  discourse  upon  several.  That 
it  constitutes  the  highest  grade  of  discourse,  all  writers  on  oratory, 
from  Aristotle  downward,  are  agreed.  But  to  occupy  it  successfully 
requires  genius  and  large  powers  of  illustration.  When  the  speaker 
has  to  keep  to  one  theme,  he  must  be  able  to  wield  all  the  weapons  of 
address.  He  must  be  skilled  to  argue,  to  explain,  persuade,  to  apply, 
and,  by  a  fusion  of  all  the  elements  of  oratory,  to  carry  his  point 
whether  his  audience  will  or  no.  Now  these  requisites  Dr.  Chalmers 
possessed  in  a  high  degree.  He  could  reason  broadly  and  powerfully ; 
he  could  explain  and  illustrate  with  exhaustless  profusion ;  he  could 
persuade  by  all  the  earnestness  of  entreaty,  all  the  pathos  of  affection, 
and  all  the  terrors  of  threatening ;  he  could  apply,  with  great  skill 
and  knowledge  of  men's  ways,  the  truth  he  would  inculcate  ;  and  he 
could  pour,  in  a  torrent  of  the  most  impassioned  fervor,  the  whole 
molten  mass  of  thought,  feeling,  description,  and  appeal,  upon  the 
hearts  and  consciences  of  his  hearers.  Thus  singularly  endowed, 
and  thus  wisely  using  his  endowments,  he  arrived  at  a  place  of  the 
highest  eminence  in  the  highest  walk  of  popular  oratory.'* 


124  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 


XV. 
GLEN  TILT  TABOOED. 

A  EENCOUNTEE  of  a  somewhat  singular  character  Las 
taken  place  in  Glen  Tilt  between  the  Duke  of  Atholl, 
backed  by  a  body  of  his  gillies,  and  a  party  of  naturalists 
headed  by  a  learned  professor  from  Edinburgh.  The  gen- 
eral question  regarding  right  of  way  in  Scotland  seems  fast 
drawing  to  issue  between  the  people  and  the  exclusives 
among  the  aristocracy,  and  this  in  a  form,  we  should  fain 
hope,  rather  unfavorable  to  the  latter,  seeing  that  the 
popular  cause  represents  very  generally,  as  in  this  case, 
that  of  the  sentiment  and  intellect  of  the  country,  while 
the  cause  of  the  exclusives  represents  merely  the  country's 
brute  force,  —  luckily  a  considerably  smaller  portion  of 
even  that  than  falls  to  the  share  of  even  our  physical  force 
Chartists.  Should  thews  and  muscles  come  to  sway  among 
us,  the  regime  must  prove  a  very  miserable  one  for  Dukes 
of  Leeds  and  of  Atholl. 

From  time  immemorial  the  public  road  between  Blair- 
Athole  and  Braemar  had  lain  through  Glen  Tilt.  In  most 
questions  regarding  right  of  roadway  witnesses  have  to  be 
examined ;  the  line  of  communication  at  issue  is  of  too 
local  and  obscure  a  character  to  be  generally  known  ;  and  so 
the  claim  respecting  it  has  to  be  decided  on  the  evidence 
of  people  who  live  in  the  immediate  neighborhood.  Not 
such,  however,  the  case  with  Glen  Tilt.  There  is  scarce  in 
the  kingdom  a  better-known  piece  of  roadway  than  that 
which  runs  through  the  glen ;  and  all  our  ampler  Guide- 
Books  and  Traveller's  Companions  assume  the  character 
of  witnesses  in  its  behalf.  Here,  for  instance,  is  the  Guide- 
Book  of  the  Messrs.  Anderson  of  Inverness,  —  at  once  one 


GLEN  TILT  TABOOED.  125 

of  the  most  minute  and  most  correct  in  its  details  with 
which  we  are  acquainted,  and  which  has  the  merit  of  being 
derived  almost  exclusively  from  original  sources.  It  does 
not  indicate  a  single  route  which  the  writers  had  not  trav- 
elled over,  nor  describe  an  object  which  they  had  not  seen 
and  examined.  And  in  it,  as  in  all  the  other  works  of  its 
class,  we  find  the  road  running  through  Glen  Tilt  which 
connects  Blair-Athole  and  Braemar  laid  down  as  open  to  the 
tourists,  equally  with  all  the  other  public  roads  of  the  coun- 
try. The  reader  will  find  it  marked,  too,  in  every  better 
map  of  Scotland.  In  the  "  National  Atlas " —  a  work 
worthy  of  its  name  —  it  may  be  seen  striking  off,  on  the 
authority  of  the  geographer  to  the  Queen,  Mr.  A.  K.  John- 
ston, at  an  acute  angle  from  the  highway  at  Blair-Athole  ; 
then  running  on  for  some  twelve  or  thirteen  miles  parallel 
to  the  Tilt ;  and  then,  after  scaling  the  heights  of  the  up- 
per part  of  the  glen,  deflecting  into  the  valley  of  the  Dee, 
and  terminating  at  Castleton  of  Braemar.  The  track  which 
it  lays  open  is  peculiarly  a  favorite  one  with  the  botanist, 
for  the  many  interesting  plants  which  it  furnishes;  and  so 
much  so  with  the  geologist,  that  what  may  be  termed  the 
classic  literature  of  the  science  might,  with  the  guide-books 
of  the  country,  be  brought  as  evidence  into  court  in  the 
case.  Playfair's  admirably-written  "  Illustrations  of  Hut- 
ton  "  take  part  against  the  Duke  and  his  gillies.  That 
curious  junction  of  the  granite  and  stratified  schists  in 
which  Hutton  recognized  the  first  really  solid  ground  for 
his  theory,  and  of  wl»ich,  as  forming  the  great  post  of  van- 
tage in  the  battle  between  his  followers  and  those  of 
Werner,  a  representation  may  be  found  in  almost  every 
geological  treatise  since  published,  occurs  in  Glen  Tilt,  and 
possesses  a  more  than  European  celebrity.  There  is  not  a 
man  of  science  in  the  world  who  has  not  heard  of  it.  The 
history  of  its  discovery,  and  of  what  it  establishes,  as  given 
in  a  few  sentences  by  one  of  the  most  popular  of  modern 
geologists,  we  must  present  to  the  reader. 
11* 


126  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

♦'  Tlie  absence  of  stratification  in  granite,"  says  Mr.  Lyell,  "  and  its 
analogy  in  mineral  character  to  rocks  deemed  of  igneous  origin,  led 
Hutton  to  conclude  that  granite  must  also  have  been  formed  from 
matter  in  fusion  ;  and  this  inference,  he  felt,  could  not  be  fully  con- 
firmed, unless  he  discovered,  at  the  contact  of  granite  and  other 
strata,  a  repetition  of  the  phenomena  exhibited  so  constantly  by  the 
trap  rocks.  Resolved  to  try  his  theory  by  this  test,  he  went  to  the 
Grampians,  and  surveyed  the  line  of  junction  of  the  granite  and 
superincumbent  stratified  masses,  and  found  in  Glen  Tilt,  in  1785, 
the  most  clear  and  unei{uivocal  proofs  in  support  of  his  views. 
Veins  of  red  granite  are  there  seen  branching  out  from  the  principal 
m£iss,  and  traversing  the  black  micaceous  schists  and  primary  lime- 
stones. The  intersected  stratified  rocks  are  so  distinct  in  color  and 
appearance  as  to  render  the  example  in  that  locality  most  striking ; 
and  the  alteration  of  the  limestone  in  contact  is  very  analogous  to 
that  produced  by  trap  veins  on  calcareous  strata.  This  verification 
of  his  system  filled  him  with  delight,  and  called  forth  such  marks  of 
joy  and  exultation  that  the  guides  who  accompanied  him,  says  hia 
biographer,  were  convinced  that  he  must  have  discovered  a  vein  of 
silver  or  gold." 

There  are  various  other  objects  interesting  to  the  geolo- 
gist on  this  track  through  the  property  of  the  Duke  of 
Atholl.  We  understand  that  when  Agassiz  was  last  in 
this  country,  he  accompanied  to  the  locality  an  Edinburgh 
professor,  well  known  both  in  the  worlds  of  letters  and 
of  science,  with  the  intention  of  visiting  a  quarry  on  the 
grounds  of  his  Grace ;  but,  on  addressing  his  Grace  for 
permission,  there  was  no  answer  returned  to  his  letter,  and 
the  distinguished  foreigner  had  to  turn  back  disappointed, 
to  say  how  much  more  liberally  he  had  been  dealt  with 
elsewhere,  and  to  contrast,  not  very  favorably  for  our  coun- 
try, the  portion  of  liberty  doled  out  to  even  the  learned 
and  celebrated  among  the  Scottish  people,  with  that  en- 
joyed under  the  comparably  free  and  kindly  despotisms 
of  the  Continent.  The  incident  happily  illustrates  the 
taste  and  understanding  of  his  Grace  the  Duke  of  Atholl, 
and  intimates  the  kind  of  measures  which  the  public  should 
keep  with  such  a  man.    If  the  Scottish  people  yield  up  to 


GLEN  TILT  TABOOED.  127 

his  Grace  their  right  of  way  through  Glen  Tilt,  they  will 
richly  deserve  to  be  shut  out  of  their  country  altogether ; 
and  be  it  remarked,  that  to  this  state  of  things  matters  are 
fast  coming  with  regard  to  the  Scottish  Highlands.  It  is 
said  of  one  of  the  Queens  of  England,  that  in  a  moment  of 
irritation  she  threatened  to  make  Scotland  a  hunting-park ; 
and  we  know  that  the  tyranny  of  the  Norman  Conquei-or 
did  actually  produce  such  a  result  over  extensive  tracts  of 
England.  The  formation  of  the  New  Forest  is  instanced 
by  all  our  historians  as  one  of  the  most  despotic  acts  of  a 
foreign  conqueror.  William,  in  order  to  indulge  his  tastes 
as  a  huntsman,  depopulated  the  country,  and  barred  out 
the  human  foot  from  an  extent,  says  Hume,  of  more  than 
thirty  miles.  It  is  to  this  act  of  despotism,  and  its  conse- 
quences, that  the  master-poet  of  the  times  of  Queen  Anne 
refers  in  his  exquisite  description : 

"  The  land  appeared  in  ages  past 
A  dreary  desert  and  a  gloomy  waste, 
To  savage  beasts  and  savage  laws  a  prey. 
And  kings  more  furious  and  severe  than  they, 
Who  claimed  the  skies,  dispeopled  air  and  floods, — 
The  lonely  lords  of  empty  wilds  and  woods." 

The  pleasures  of  the  chase  are  necessarily  jealous  and  un- 
social. The  shepherd  can  carry  on  his  useful  profession 
without  quarrel  with  the  chance  traveller ;  the  agricultur- 
ist in  an  open  country  has  merely  to  fence  against  the  en- 
croachments of  the  vagrant  foot  the  patches  actually  under 
cultivation  at  the  time  ;  whereas  it  is  the  tendency  of  the 
huntsman  possessed  of  the  necessary  power,  to  "  empty " 
the  "  wilds  and  woods  "  of  their  human  inhabitants.  The 
traveller  he  regards  as  a  rival  or  an  enemy :  he  looks  upon 
him  as  come  to  lessen  his  sport,  either  by  sharing  in  it  or 
by  disturbing  it ;  and  so,  when  he  can,  he  reigns,  according 
to  the  poet,  a  "lonely  lord,"  and  the  country  spreads  out 
around  him,  as  in  the  days  of  the  Conqueror,  "  a  dreary 
desert  and  a  gloomy  waste."    And  into  this  state  of  savage 


128  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

nature  and  jealous  appropriation  —  characteristic,  in  the 
sister  kingdom,  of  the  times  of  the  Conquest  —  many  dis- 
tricts in  the  Highlands  of  Scotland  are  fast  passing.  The 
great  sheep-farms  were  permitted,  in  the  first  instance,  to 
swallow  up  the  old  agricultural  holdings ;  and  now  the  let 
shootings  and  game-parks  are  fast  swallowing  up  the  great 
sheep-farms.  The  ancient  inhabitants  were  cleared  off,  in 
the  first  process,  to  make  way  for  the  sheep  ;  and  now  the 
people  of  Scotland  generally  are  to  be  shut  out  from  these 
vast  tracts,  lest  they  should  disturb  the  game.  There  is  no 
exception  to  be  made  by  cat-witted  dukes  and  illiterate 
lords  in  favor  of  the  man  of  letters,  however  elegant  his 
tastes  and  pursuits ;  or  the  man  of  science,  however  pro- 
found his  talents  and  acquirements,  or  however  important 
the  objects  to  which  he  is  applying  them.  The  Duke  of 
Leeds  has  already  shut  up  the  Grampians,  and  the  Duke 
of  Atholl  has  tabooed  Glen  Tilt.  The  gentleman  and 
scholar  who,  in  quest  of  knowledge,  and  on  the  strength 
of  the  prescriptive  right  enjoyed  from  time  immemorial  by 
even  the  humblest  of  the  people,  enters  these  districts, 
finds  himself  subjected  to  insult  and  injury;  and  should 
the  evil  be  suffered  to  go  on  unchecked,  we  shall  by  and 
by  see  the  most  interesting  portions  of  our  country  barred 
up  against  us  by  parishes  and  counties.  If  one  proprietor 
shut  up  Glen  Tilt,  why  may  not  a  combination  of  proprie- 
tors shut  up  Perthshire?  Or  if  one  sporting  tenant  bar 
against  us  the  Grampians,  why,  when  the  system  of  shoot- 
ing-farms and  game-])arks  has  become  completed,  might  not 
the  sporting  tenants  united  shut  up  against  us  the  entire 
Highlands?  They  would  be  prevented,  it  may  be  said,  by 
certain  rights  of  roadway.  No  ;  these  rights  of  roadway 
as  certainly  exist  in  the  case  of  Glen  Tilt  and  the  Gram- 
pians as  over  the  Highlands  generally. 

Regretting,  as  we  do,  that  a  gentleman  and  scholar,  with 
his  friends,  of  character  resembling  his  own,  should  have 
been  subjected  to  unworthy  treatment,  we  yet  deem  it 
fortunate  that  it  should  have  fallen  rather  on  men  such  a8 


GLEN  TILT  TABOOED.  129 

he  and  they  than  on  some  party  of  humble  individuals, 
})ossessed  of  no  adequate  means  of  making  their  case 
known,  or  of  attracting  for  it  any  general  sympathy  even 
if  they  had.  Were,  however,  the  party  of  humble  men  to 
be  very  numerous,  —  some  such  pleasure  party  as  occa- 
sionally, in  these  days,  sets  out  from  Edinburgh  for  Ber- 
wick, Glasgow,  or  the  land  of  Burns, —  we  could  afford  to 
wish  them  substituted  for  the  naturalist  and  the  professor. 
There  is,  we  repeat,  a  right  of  roadway  through  Glen  Tilt : 
the  Duke  of  Atholl  is  quite  at  liberty  to  challenge  that 
privilege  in  a  court  of  law ;  but  he  has  no  right  whatever 
violently  to  arrest  travellers  on  the  public  way ;  and  all 
good  subjects,  when  the  policeman  or  the  soldier  is  not  at 
hand  to  protect  them,  in  the  name  and  authority  of  the 
civil  magistrate,  from  illegal  violence,  have  a  right  to  pro- 
tect themselves.  And  we  are  pretty  sure  a  few  scores  of 
our  working  men  could  defend  themselves  very  admirably 
amid  the  solitudes  of  Glen  Tilt,  even  though  assailed  by 
the  Knight  of  the  Gael  and  all  his  esquires.  As  the  case 
chanced,  however,  it  is  well  that  a  learned  professor  and  a 
party  of  amateur  naturalists  should  have  been  the  suffer- 
ers. We  may  just  mention  in  the  passing,  as  a  curious 
coincidence,  that  the  professor  in  question  is  one  of  the 
nearest  living  relatives  of  the  philosophic  Hutton,  who 
sixty-two  years  ago  rendered  Glen  Tilt  so  famous  ;  the 
professor's  father  is,  we  iinderstand,  the  philosopher's  near- 
est living  relative.  We  trust  to  see  the  country  roused  all  the 
sooner  and  the  more  widely  in  consequence  of  the  charac- 
ter of  the  outrage,  to  assert  for  the  people  a  right  to  walk 
over  the  country's  area,  —  to  share  in  that  cheap  enjoy- 
ment of  the  beauties  of  its  scenery  which  softens  and  hu- 
manizes the  heart,  —  and  to  trace  unchallenged,  amid  its 
wild  moors,  on  its  lonely  hilltops,  or  in  the  rigid  folds  of 
its  strata,  those  revelations  of  the  All-wise  Designer  which 
serve  both  to  expand  the  imagination  and  to  exercise  the 
understanding.  Not  merely  the  rights  of  the  poor  man, 
but  the  privileges  of  the  man  of  literature,  and  the  inter- 


130  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

ests  of  the  man  of  science,  are  involved  in  this  question, — 
those  rights,  interests,  and  privileges  which  the  true  aris- 
tocracy of  the  country  have  ever  been  the  first  to  recog- 
nize. Our  better  proprietors  have  often  admitted  where 
they  might  have  excluded,  —  never  excluded  where  they 
ought  to  have  admitted;  and  the  experience  of  our  men 
of  literature  and  of  science,  save  in  those  singularly  rare 
instances  in  which  they  come  in  contact  with  men  of  the 
peculiar  mental  cast  of  the  Duke  of  Atholl,  has  been  invari- 
ably that  of  Cowper's  in  the  park  of  the  Throckraortons :  — 

"  The  folded  gates  would  bar  my  progress  now. 
But  that  the  lord  of  this  enclosed  demesne. 
Communicative  of  the  good  he  owns. 
Admits  me  to  a  share :  the  guiltless  eye 
Commits  no  wrong,  nor  wastes  what  it  enjoys." 

We  will  not  instance  the  case  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  nor 
Bay  how,  in  his  kindliness  of  heart,  he  flung  open  the 
grounds  of  Abbotsford  to  his  humbler  neighbors,  without 
ever  finding  occasion  to  repent  his  liberality  ;  for  Sir 
Walter  was  no  ordinary  proprietor,  nor,  jJerhaps,  was  he 
dealt  with  in  this  matter  according  to  the  ordinary  expe- 
rience of  the  class.  The  passage,  however,  in  which,  in 
his  "  Letters  of  Malachi  Malagrowther,"  he  sums  up  some 
of  the  balancing  advantages  which  make  up  to  the  poor 
Highlander  for  the  general  hardness  of  his  lot,  seems  so 
entirely  to  our  j^urpose  that  we  cannot  forbear  reference 
at  least  to  it.  Taken  in  connection  with  the  shutting 
np  of  Glen  Tilt  and  the  Grampians,  it  forms  a  piece  of 
peculiarly  exquisite  irony  :  — 

"  The  inhabitants  of  the  wilder  districts  in  Scotland,"  says  Sir 
Walter,  "  have  actually  some  enjoyments,  both  moral  and  physical, 
which  compensate  for  the  want  of  better  subsistence  and  more 
comfortable  lodging.  In  a  word,  they  have  more  liberty  than  the 
inhabitants  of  the  richer  soil.  Englishmen  will  start  at  this  as  a  par- 
adox ;  but  it  is  very  true,  notwithstanding,  that  if  one  great  privilege 


GLEN   TILT  TABOOED.  131 

of  liberty  be  the  power  of  going  where  a  man  pleases,  the  Scottish 
peasant  enjoys  it  much  more  than  the  English.  The  pleasure  of 
viewing  '  fair  nature's  face,'  and  a  great  many  other  primitive  enjoy- 
ments, for  which  a  better  diet  and  lodging  are  but  indifferent  substi- 
tutes, are  more  within  the  power  of  the  poor  man  in  Scotland  than 
in  the  sister  country.  A  Scottish  gentleman  in  the  wilder  districts 
is  seldom  severe  in  excluding  his  poor  neighbors  from  his  grounds ; 
and  I  have  known  many  that  have  voluntarily  thrown  them  open  to 
all  quiet  and  decent  persons  who  wish  to  enjoy  them.  The  game 
of  such  liberal  proprietors,  their  plantations,  their  fences,  and  all 
that  is  apt  to  suffer  from  intruders,  have,  I  have  observed,  been 
better  protected  than  when  severe  measures  of  general  seclusion 
■were  adopted.  But  in  many  districts  the  part  of  the  soil  which, 
■with  the  utmost  stretch  of  appropriation,  the  first-born  of  Egj'pt 
can  set  apart  for  his  own  exclusive  use,  bears  a  small  proportion 
indeed  to  the  uncultivated  wastes.  The  step  of  the  mountaineer 
on  his  wild  heath,  solitary  mountains,  and  beside  his  far-spread  lake, 
is  more  free  than  that  which  is  confined  to  a  dusty  turnpike,  and 
warned  from  casual  deviations  by  advertisements,  which  menace  the 
summary  vindication  of  the  proprietor's  monoply  of  his  extensive 
park  by  spring-guns  or  man-traps,  or  the  more  protracted,  yet 
scarce  less  formidable,  denunciation  of  what  is  often,  and  scarce  un- 
justly, spelled  ^persecution  according  to  law.'  Above  all,  the  peas- 
ant lives  and  dies,  as  his  father  did,  in  the  cot  where  he  was  born, 
without  ever  experiencing  the  horrors  of  a  workhouse.  This  may 
compensate  for  the  want  of  much  beef,  beer,  and  pudding,  in  those 
to  whom  habit  has  not  made  this  diet  indispensable." 

"  Give  us  a  good  trespass  act,"  say  some  of  our  propri- 
etors, "  and  we  care  not  though  you  abolish  the  garae-la'ws 
to-morrow."  The  country  sees  in  the  affair  of  Gen  Tilt 
and  the  Grampians  what  a  good  trespass  act  means,  and 
has  fair  warning  to  avoid  effecting  the  work  of  abolition 
—  for  effected  it  will  be  —  in  a  careless  and  slovenly  style, 
that  might  result  ultimately  in  but  shutting  the  Scotch  out 
of  Scotland.  We  trust,  meanwhile,  that  the  rencounter 
of  the  Duke  of  AthoU  with  the  Edinburgh  professor  will 
not  be  unproductive  of  consequences.  The  general  ques- 
tion could  not  be  fought  on  more  advantageous  ground ; 
and  at  least  nineteen  twentieths  of  the  population  of  the 


132  HISTORICAL  AliTD   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

kingdom  have  an  interest  in  taking  part  in  it,  and  fighting 
it  out.  There  ah-eady  exists  in  Edinburgh  a  "  Footpath 
Society ; "  and  we  think  the  country  could  not  do  better 
than  make  the  Society  the  nucleus  of  a  great  league,  and, 
in  the  case  of  the  professor,  bring  his  Grace  the  Duke  into 
court.  By  scarce  any  other  means,  in  times  like  the  pres- 
ent, can  the  rights  of  the  people  be  asserted.  Combination 
and  a  general  fund  formed  the  policy  of  Cobden  and  of 
O'Connell,  and  of  a  greater  than  either,  —  Thomas  Chal- 
mers ;  and  only  through  combination  and  a  common  fund 
can  our  country  be  now  preserved  to  its  people  from  the 
ungenerous  and  narrow-minded  aggressions  of  Dukes  of 
Atholl  and  of  Leeds. 


EDINBURGH  AN  AGE  AGO.  133 


XVI. 

EDINBURGH  AN  AGE  AGO, 

Edinburgh  for  about  a  hundred  and  thirty  years  after 
the  Union  continued  to  be  in  effect,  and  not  in  name 
merely,  the  capital  of  a  kingdom,  and  occupied  a  place  in 
the  eye  of  the  world  scarcely  second  to  that  of  London. 
In  population  and  wealth  it  stood  not  higher  than  the 
third-class  towns  of  England  ;  it  had  no  commerce,  and 
very  little  trade,  nor  did  it  form  a  great  agricultural  centre ; 
and  as  for  the  few  members  of  the  national  aristocracy 
that  continued  to  make  it  their  home  after  the  disappear- 
ance of  its  parliament,  they  were  not  rich,  and  they  were 
not  influential,  and  added  to  neither  its  imjiortance  nor  its 
celebrity.  The  high  place  which  Edinburgh  held  among 
the  cities  of  the  earth  it  owed  exclusively  to  the  intellect- 
ual standing  and  high  literary  ability  of  a  few  distinguished 
citizens,  who  were  able  to  do  for  it  greatly  more  in  the 
eye  of  Eui'ope  than  had  been  done  by  its  court  and  par- 
liament, or  than  could  have  been  done  thi'ough  any  other 
agency,  by  the  capital  of  a  small  and  poor  country,  peopled 
by  but  a  handful  of  men.  Ireland  produced  many  famous 
orators,  shrewd  statesmen,  and  great  authors  ;  but  they 
did  comparatively  little  for  Dublin,  even  previous  to  the 
Union.  With  the  writings  of  Swift,  Goldsmith,  Burke, 
Sheridan,  and  Thomas  Moore  before  us,  we  can  point  to 
only  one  w^ork  which  continues  to  live  in  English  literature, 
—  "The  Draper's  Letters,"  —  that  issued  originally  from 
the  Dublin  press.  London  drew  to  itself  the  literary  ability 
of  Ireland,  and  absorbed  and  assimilated  it  just  as  it  did 
a  portion  of  that  of  Scotland  represented  by  the  Burnets, 
Thomsons,  Armsti'ongs,  Arbuthnots,  Meikles,  and  SmoIIetts 
12 


134  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

of  the  three  last  ages ;  and  in  London  the  Irish  became 
simply  Britons,  and  served  to  swell  the  general  stream 
of  British  literature.  But  Scotland  retained  not  a  few 
of  her  most  characteristic  authors  ;  and  her  capital  —  in 
many  respects  less  considerable  than  Dublin  —  formed  a 
great  literaiy  mart,  second  at  one  time,  in  the  importance 
and  enduring  character  of  the  works  it  produced,  to  no 
other  in  the  world.  Nothing,  however,  can  be  more 
evident  than  that  this  state  of  things  is  passing  away. 
During  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  one  distinguished 
name  after  another  has  been  withdrawn  by  death  from 
that  second  great  constellation  of  Scotchmen  resident  in 
Edinburgh  to  which  Chalmers,  Sir  Walter  Scott,  and  Lord 
Jeffrey  belonged  ;  and  with  Sir  William  Hamilton  the  last 
of  the  group  may  be  said  to  have  disappeared.  For  the 
future,  Edinburgh  bids  fair  to  take  its  place  simply  amgng 
the  greater  provincial  towns  of  the  empire ;  and  it  seems 
but  natural  to  look  upon  her  departing  glory  with  a  sigh, 
and  to  luxuriate  in  recollection  over  the  times  when  she 
stood  highest  in  the  intellectual  scale,  and  possessed  an 
influence  over  opinion  coextensive  with  civilized  man. 

We  have  been  led  into  this  train  by  the  perusal  of  one 
of  the  most  interesting  volumes  which  has  issued  from  the 
Scottish  press  for  several  years,  —  "  Memorials  of  his  Time ; 
by  Henry  Cockburn."  Lord  Cockburn  cnme  into  life  just 
in  time  to  occupy  the  most  interesting  point  possible  as 
an  observer.  He  was  born  nearly  a  year  before  Chalmers, 
only  eight  years  after  Scott,  and  about  fourteen  years 
before  Lockhart.  The  place  he  occupied  in  that  second 
group  of  eminent  men  to  which  the  capital  of  Scotland 
owed  its  glory  was  thus,  chronologically,  neai'ly  a  middle 
place,  and  the  best  conceivable  for  observation.  He  was 
in  time  too  to  see,  at  least  as  a  boy,  most  of  the  earlier 
group.  The  greatest  of  their  number,  Hume,  had  indeed 
passed  from  off  the  stage,  but  almost  all  the  others  still 
lived.  Home,  Robertson,  Blair,  Henry,  were  flourishing 
in  green  old  age,  at  a  time  when  he  had   shot  up  into 


EDINBURGH   AN  AGE  AGO.  135 

curious,  observant  boyhood  ;  and  Mackenzie  and  Dugald 
Stewart  were  still  in  but  middle  life.  It  is  perhaps  beyond 
the  reach  of  philosophy  to  assign  adequate  reasons  for  the 
appearance  at  one  period  rather  than  another  of  groupa 
of  great  men.  We  know  not  why  the  reign  of  Elizabeth 
should  have  had  its  family  of  giants,  —  its  Shaks]3eare, 
Spencer,  Raleigh,  and  Bacon ;  or  why  a  Milton,  Hampden, 
and  Cromwell  should  have  arisen  together  during  the 
middle  of  the  following  century;  and  that  after  theirtime 
only  men  of  a  lower  statui'e,  though  of  exquisite  propor- 
tions, should  have  come  into  existence,  to  flourish  as  the 
wits  of  Queen  Anne.  Nor  can  it  be  told  why  the  Humes, 
Robertsons,  and  Adam  Smiths  should  have  appeared  in 
Scotland  together  in  one  splendid  group,  to  give  place  to 
another  group  scarce  less  brilliant,  though  in  a  different 
way.  We  only  know,  that  among  a  people  of  such  intel- 
lectual activity  as  the  Scotch,  a  literary  development  of 
the  national  mind  might  have  been  expected  much  about 
the  earlier  time.  The  persecutions  and  troubles  of  the 
seventeenth  century  had  terminated  with  the  Revolution  ; 
the  intellect  of  the  country,  overlaid  for  nearly  a  hundred 
years,  had  been  set  free,  and  required  only  a  fitting  vehicle 
in  which  to  address  that  extended  public  to  which  the 
Union  had  taught  our  countrymen  to  look;  but  for  more 
than  thirty  years  the  necessary  vehicle  was  wanting. 
Scotchmen  bred  in  Scotland  had  great  difficulty  in  mas- 
tering that  essentially  foreign  language  the  English ;  and 
not  until  the  appearance  of  Hume's  first  work  in  1738  was 
there  an  English  book  produced  by  a  Scotchman,  within 
the  limits  of  the  country,  which  Englishmen  could  rec- 
ognize as  really  written  in  their  own  tongue.  But  the 
necessary  mastery  of  the  language  once  acquired,  it  was 
an  inevitable  consequence  of  the  native  mass  and  quality 
of  the  Scottish  mind  that  it  should  make  itself  felt  in 
British  literature  ;  though,  of  course,  why  it  should  have 
given  to  Britain  at  neai'ly  the  same  time  its  two  greatest 
historians,  itfs  first  and  greatest  political  economist,  and  a 


1138  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

philosophy  destined  to  be  known  as  peculiarly  the  Scotch 
philosophy  all  over  the  world,  cannot,  of  course,  be  so 
readily  shown. 

It  is  greatly  easier  to  say  why  such  talent  should  have 
found  a  permanent  centre  in  Edinburgh.  Simple  as  it  may 
seem,  the  prescriptive  right  of  the  capital  to  draft  to  its 
pulpits  the  elite  of  the  Established  clergy  did  more  for  it 
than  almost  aught  else.  Robertson  the  historian  had  been 
minister  of  Gladsmuir ;  Henry  the  historian,  minister  of  a 
Presbyterian  congregation  in  Berwick  ;  Hugh  Blair,  min- 
ister of  Collessie  ;  Finlayson,  so  distinguished  at  one  time 
for  his  sermons,  and  a  meritorious  Logic  Professor  in  the 
University,  had  been  minister  of  Borthwick ;  Macknight, 
the  harmonist  of  the  Gospels,  minister  of  Jedburgh  ;  and 
Dr.  John  Erskine,  minister  of  Kirkintilloch.  But  after 
they  had  succeeded  in  making  themselves  known  by  their 
writings,  they  were  all  concentrated  in  Edinburgh,  with  not  a 
few  other  able  and  brilliant  men  ;  and  in  an  age  in  which  the 
Scottish  clergy,  whatever  might  be  their  merely  professional 
merits  as  a  class,  were  perhaps  the  most  literary  in  Europe, 
such  a  privilege  could  not  fail  to  reflect  much  honor  on  the 
favored  city  for  whose  special  benefit  it  was  exerted.  The 
University,  too,  was  singularly  fortunate  in  its  professors, 
in  especial  in  its  school  of  anatomy  and  medicine,  long 
maintained  in  high  repute  by  the  Monroes,  Cullens,  and 
Grcgories,  and  which  reckoned  among  its  offshoots,  though 
they  concentrated  their  energies  rather  on  physical  and 
natural  than  on  medical  science,  men  such  as  Hutton  and 
Black.  In  mathematics  it  had  boasted  in  succession  of 
a  David  Gregory  and  Colin  Madaren,  both  friends  and 
proteges  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton  ;  and  in  'ater  times,  of  a 
Mattlicw  Stewart,  John  Playfair,  and  Sir  Joiin  Leslie.  Both 
..Jbese  last,  with  their  predecessor  Robinson,  had  also  ren- 
viered  its  chair  of  natural  philosophy  a  very  celebrated  one ; 
dnd  of  its  moral  science,  it  must  be  enough  to  say  that  its 
metaphysical  chair  was  filled  in  succession  by  Dr.  Adam 
Ferguson,  Dugald  Stewart,  Thomas  Brown,  and  latterly 


EDIXBTIRGH  AN  AGE  AGO.  137 

by  the  brilliant  Wilson,  who,  if  less  distinguished  than  his 
predecessors  in  the  walks  of  abstract  thought,  more  than 
equalled  them  in  genius,  and  in  his  influence  over  the  gen- 
eral literature  of  the  age.  Such  men  are  the  gifts  of  Prov- 
idence to  a  country,  and  cannot  be  produced  at  any  given 
lime  on  the  ordinary  principle  of  demand  and  supply. 
But  even  when  they  exist,  they  may  be  kept  out  of  their 
proper  places  by  an  ill-exercised  patronage  ;  and  it  must 
be  conceded  to  the  old  close  corporation  of  Edinburgh, 
that  in  the  main  it  exercised  its  patronage  with  great  dis- 
crimination, and  for  the  best  interests  of  the  city.  It  was 
of  signal  advantage  that  the  established  religion  of  the 
country  was  numerically  and  politically  so  strong  at  the 
time  that  the  disturbing  element  of  denominational  jeal- 
ousy could  have  no  existence  in  the  body ;  and,  influenced 
and  directed  by  the  general  intellect  of  the  city,  its  choice 
fell  on  the  best  possible  men,  whether  Episcopalian  or 
Presbyterian,  that  lay  within  its  reach.  Further,  the  legal 
profession  contributed  largely  to  the  earlier  intellectual 
glory  of  Edinburgh.  Kames  was  one  of  its  fii'st  cultivators 
of  letters  on  the  English  model.  Monboddo,  with  all  his 
vagaries  a  very  superior  man  and  very  vigorous  writer, 
belonged  to  the  same  class.  Mackenzie,  though  in  a  differ- 
ent walk  and  of  a  later  time,  belonged  also  to  the  legal 
profession.  Almost  all  the  contributors  to  the  two  peri- 
odicals which  he  edited  in  succession  —  the  "Mirror"  and 
"Lounger"  —  were  also  lawyei-s.  And  in  Edinburgh's 
second  intellectual  group  the  legal  faculty  greatly  predom- 
inated. Scott,  Wilson,  Lockhart,  were  all,  at  least  nomi- 
nally, of  the  faculty;  and  the  editor  of  the  "Edinburgh 
Review,"  with  its  most  vigorous  contributors,  were,  even 
when  they  wrote  most  largely  for  its  r>ages,  busied  with 
the  toils  of  the  bar.  Such  were  the  elements  of  that  intel- 
lectual greatness  of  the  Scottish  capital  which  gave  it  so 
high  a  place  among  the  cities  of  the  world.  How  have 
they  now  so  signally  failed  to  keep  up  the  old  supply? 
It  would  of  course  be  as  idle  to  inquire  why  Edinburgh 
12* 


138  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGHRAPHICAL. 

has  at  the  present  time  no  Scotts,  Humes,  or  Chalmerses, 
as  to  inquire  why  Britain  has  no  Shakspeares,  Newtons,  or 
Miltons.  Such  men  always  rank  among  the  rarest  pro- 
ductions of  nature ;  and  centuries  elapse  in  the  history  of 
even  learned  and  ingenious  nations  in  which  there  appear 
none  so  large  of  calibre  or  so  various  of  faculty.  Further, 
it  must  be  confessed  that  both  the  bar  and  the  university 
have  in  a  very  considerable  degree  come  under  that  law 
of  paroxysm  which  leaves  occasional  blank  spaces  in  the 
production  of  men  of  a  high  class,  and  the  equally  obvious 
law  that  gives  to  a  highly  cultivated  age  like  the  pres- 
ent great  abundance  everywhere  of  men  of  mere  talent 
and  accomplishment.  Aberdeen,  Glasgow,  and  the  great 
second-classs  towns  of  England,  are  all,  from  this  double 
circumstance  of  a  lack  of  the  highest  men  and  a  great 
abundance  of  men  of  the  subordinate  class,  much  nearer 
the  level  of  Edinburgh  than  they  were  only  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago,  when  Scott  and  Jeffrey  might  be  seen  every 
day  in  term-time  at  the  Parliament  House,  and  Chalmers, 
Wilson,  and  Sir  William  Hamilton  lectured  in  the  Univer- 
sity. That  change,  too,  which  has  passed  over  the  pervad- 
ing literature  of  the  age,  and  given  a  first  place  to  the 
daily  newspaper,  and  only  a  second  place  to  the  bulky 
quarterly,  has  of  necessity  militated  against  the  capital  of 
a  small  country  whose  most  successful  newspapers  must 
content  themselves  with  a  circulation  of  but  from  two  to 
three  thousand.  For  the  highest  periodic  literature  Lon- 
don has,  of  consequence,  become  the  only  true  mart ;  and 
the  Scotchman  who  would  live  by  it  must  of  necessity 
make  the  great  metropolis  his  home.  Yet  further,  the 
source  whence  Edinburgh  derived  so  much  of  at  least  her 
earlier  halo  of  glory  can  scarce  be  said  any  longer  to  exist. 
Edinburgh  has  still  the  old  privilege  of  drafting  to  her 
established  churclies  the  elite  of  the  body  that  can  alone 
legally  occupy  them ;  but  that  great  revolution  in  matters 
ecclesiastical  which  has  rendered  the  abolition  of  the  tests 
Bo  essential  to  the  efficient  maintenance  of  the  educational 


EDINBURGH  AN  AGE  AGO.  139 

institutions  of  the  nation,  has  manifested  itself  within  the 
pale  of  the  Establishment;  and  we  suppose  there  is  no  one 
who  will  now  contend  that  aught  of  the  old  ability  is  to 
be  derived  from  this  privilege.  We  have  before  us  a  bulky- 
volume,  entitled  "Men  of  the  Time,"  which,  with  its  bio- 
graphic notices  of  only  the  living,  forms  a  sort  of  supple- 
ment to  those  ordinary  works  of  biography  which  record 
the  names  of  only  the  dead.  All  the  men  whose  names  it 
records  have  made  themselves  known  in  the  worlds  of 
thought  or  action.  There  are,  no  doubt,  omissions  of  names 
that  ought  to  have  found  a  place  in  it,  and  some  of  the 
names  which  it  records  might  well  have  been  omitted ; 
but  it  is  an  English,  not  a  Scotch  publication ;  it  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  got  up  for  any  i>arty  purpose,  —  certainly 
not  for  any  party  purpose  of  the  Free  Church;  and  its 
evidence,  positive  and  negative,  on  a  question  like  the 
present,  may,  we  think,  be  safely  received.  And  while  we 
find  in  this  volume  at  least  three  names  of  Edinburgh 
ministers  who  were  brought  into  the  place  previous  to  the 
Disruption  through  the  exercise  of  the  old  privilege,  but 
who  quitted  the  Establishment  on  the  Disruption,  we  do 
not  find  in  it  the  name  of  a  single  minister  who  now  occu- 
pies any  of  the  city  churches. 

In  that  altered  state  of  things  to  which  we  refer,  Edin- 
burgh must  of  course  acquiesce  with  the  best  grace  it  can. 
It  seems  greatly  less  to  be  wondered  at  that  such  a  fate 
should  overtake  it  now  than  that  it  should  not  have  over- 
taken it  earlier.  There  are  two  circumstances  on  which 
the  great  interest  of  Lord  Cockburn's  "Memorials"  seems 
to  depend,  independently  of  the  very  pleasing  manner  in 
which  the  work  is  written.  The  recollection  of  two  such 
groups  of  men  as  for  a  whole  century  gave  celebrity  to  a 
nation,  could  scarce  fail  to  secure  perusal,  from  the  interest 
which  ever  attaches  to  the  slightest  personal  traits  or 
peculiarities  of  men  of  fine  genius  or  high  talents.  We 
read  the  lives  of  poets  and  philosophers,  not  for  the  striking 
points  of  the  stories  which  they  embody,  —  for  striking 


140  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

points  there  may  be  none,  —  but  simply  for  the  sake  of 
the  men  themselves.  We  also  feel  a  natural  interest  in 
acquainting  ourselves  with  the  strongly-marked  manners 
and  broadly-defined  characters  of  comparatively  rude  and 
simple  ages,  and  seek  to  derive  our  amusement  rather 
from  the  well  draAvn-portraits  of  men  who  bear  all  the 
natural  lineaments  than  from  the  masked  and  muffled  men 
of  a  more  polished  time.  No  small  portion  of  the  amuse- 
ment we  derive  from  the  glowing  fictions  of  Scott  results 
from  the  well-drawn  majiners  of  ages  a  century  or  two  in 
advance  of  our  own.  And  in  Lord  Cockburn's  "  Memo- 
rials "  we  have  both  elements  of  interest  united.  In  Scot- 
land, as  in  several  other  countries  of  northern  Europe,  the 
intellectual  development  of  the  leading  minds  preceded 
the  general  development  of  even  the  upper  classes  in  the 
politenesses  and  amenities.  Macaulay,  in  describing  the 
mental  standing  of  Scotland  at  the  time  when  the  acces- 
sion of  James  VI.  to  the  throne  of  Elizabeth  virtually 
united  it  to  England,  remarks,  that,  though  it  was  the 
poorest  kingdom  in  Christendom,  it  already  vied  in  ev- 
ery branch  of  learning  with  the  most  favored  countries. 
"Scotsmen,"  he  adds,  "whose  dwellings  and  whose  food 
were  as  wretched  as  those  of  the  Icelanders  of  our  time, 
wrote  Latin  verses  with  more  than  the  delicacy  of  Vida, 
and  made  discoveries  in  science  which  would  have  added  to 
the  renown  of  Galileo."  High  intellectual  cultivation  and 
great  simplicity,  nay,  rudeness,  of  manners,  with  an  entire 
UTiacquaintance  with  what  are  now  the  common  arts  of  life, 
existed  in  the  same  race,  and,  though  the  conventionalisms 
gained  ground  as  the  years  passed  by,  continued  to  do 
so  till  at  least  the  commencement  of  the  present  century. 
Not  a  few  of  the  best  writers  and  most  vigorous  thinkers 
Britain  ever  produced  bore  about  them  all  the  sharp-edged 
angularity  of  that  early  state  of  society  in  which  every 
individual,  instead  of  being  smoothed  down  to  a  common 
mediocre  standard,  carries  about  him,  like  an  imvvorn  medal, 
the  original  impress  stamped  upon  him  by  nature ;  and 


EDINBURGH  AN  AGE  AGO.  141 

they  were  thus  not  only  interesting  as  men  of  large  cal- 
ibre, but  also  as  the  curious  characters  of  a  primitive  age. 
We  have  not  only  no  such  writers  or  thinkers  now  as 
Hume,  Robertson,  Kames,  and  Adam  Smith,  but  no  such 
characters.  In  some  respects,  however,  society  seems  to 
have  improved  in  well-nigh  the  degree  in  which  it  has  be- 
come less  picturesque.  Lockhart  remarks,  in  his  "  Life  of 
Burns,"  that  there  was  at  least  one  class  with  which  the 
poet  came  in  contact  in  Edinbui'gh,  that,  unlike  its  clerical 
literati,  were  "  shocked  by  his  rudeness  or  alarmed  by  his 
wit."  He  adds,  that  among  the  lawyers  of  that  age  "  wine- 
bibbing  and  the  principle  of  jollity  was  indeed  in  its  high 
and  palmy  state  ;  and  that  the  poet  partook  largely  in 
those  tavern  scenes  of  audacious  hilarity,  which  then 
soothed,  as  a  matter  of  course,  the  arid  labors  of  the  north- 
ern noblesse  de  la  roheP  And  then  he  goes  on  to  show 
that  there  is  too  much  reason  to  fear  that  Burns,  who  had 
tasted  but  rarely  of  such  excesses  in  Ayrshire,  caught  harm 
from  his  new  companions,  and  became  nearly  as  lax  in  his 
habits,  and  nearly  as  reprehensible  in  his  morals,  as  most 
respectable  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  and  influential 
elders  of  the  General  Assembly.  And  the  work  before  us 
fihows  how  very  much  may  be  involved  in  the  remark* 
Certainly,  if  Burns  ever  drank  half  so  hard  as  some  of  the 
leading  lawyer  elders,  who,  laudably  alarmed  lest  the  found- 
ations of  our  fiith  should  be  undermined  by  the  metaphys- 
ics of  Sir  John  Leslie,  took  most  decided  part  against  the 
appointment  of  that  philosopher,  he  must  have  been  nearly 
as  bad  as  he  has  been  represented  by  his  severer  censors. 
The  late  Lord  Hermand  may  be  regarded  as  no  unmeet 
representative  of  the  class. 

"  He  had  acted,"  says  Lord  Cockbum,  — his  nephew,  by  the  way, 
—  "  in  more  of  the  severest  scenes  of  old  Scotch  drinking  than  any 
man  at  least  living.  Commonplace  topers  think  drinking  a  pleasm-e ; 
but  with  Hermand  it  was  a  virtue.  It  inspired  the  excitement  by 
whicli  he  was  elevated,  and  the  discursive  jollity  which  he  loved  to 
promote.    But  beyond  these  ordinary  attractions,  he  had  a  sinctjre 


142  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

respect  for  drinking :  indeed,  a  high  moral  approbation,  and  a  seri« 
ous  compassion  for  the  poor  wretches  who  could  not  indulge  in  it; 
but  due  contempt  of  those  who  could  but  diJ  not.  He  groaned 
over  the  gradual  disappearance  of  the  Fineat  days  of  periodical  fes- 
tivity, and  prolonged  the  observance,  like  a  hero  fighting  amidst  his 
fallen  friends,  as  long  as  he  could.  The  worship  of  Bacchus,  which 
softened  his  own  heart,  and  seemed  to  him  to  soften  the  hearts  of 

his  companions,  was  a  sacred  duty No  carouse  ever  injured 

his  health Two  youn<j  gentlemen,  jcreat  friends,  went  tojiether 

to  the  theatre  in  Glasgow,  supped  at  the  lodgings  of  one  of  them, 
and  passed  a  whole  summer  night  over  their  punch.  In  the  morn- 
ing a  kindly  wrangle  broke  out  about  their  separating  or  not  sepa- 
rating, when,  by  some  rashness,  if  not  accident,  one  of  them  was 
stabbed,  not  violently,  but  in  so  vital  a  part  that  he  died  on  the 
spot.  The  survivor  was  tried  at  Edinburgh,  and  was  convicted  of 
culpable  homicide.  It  was  one  of  the  sad  cases  where  the  legal 
guilt  was  greater  than  the  moral,  and,  very  properly,  he  was  sen- 
tenced to  only  a  short  imprisonment.  Hermand,  who  felt  that  dis- 
credit had  been  brought  on  the  cause  of  drinking,  had  no  sympathy 
with  the  tenderness  of  his  temperate  brethren,  and  was  vehement 
for  transportation.  '  We  are  told  that  there  was  no  malace,  and 
that  the  prisoner  must  have  been  in  licjuor.  In  liquor !  Why,  he 
was  drunk!  And  yet  he  murdered  the  very  man  that  had  been 
drinking  Avith  him  1  They  had  been  carousing  the  whole  night ; 
and  yet  he  stabbed  him,  after  drinking  a  whole  bottle  of  rum  with 
him  !  Good  God !  my  laards,  if  he  will  do  this  when  he  is  drunk, 
what  will  he  do  when  he  is  sober  I ' " 

As  an  elder  this  worthy  representative  of  the  old  school 
was  no  less  extraordinary  than  as  a  judge.  The  humor  of 
Goldsmith  has  been  described  as  hurrying  him  into  mere 
unnatural  farce  when  he  describes  his  incarcerated  debtor 
as  remarking  from  his  prison,  in  the  prospect  of  a  Galilean 
invasion,  —  "The  greatest  of  my  a])prehensions  is  for  our 
freedom ! "  and  the  profane  soldier,  very  much  a  Protestant, 
as  chiming  in  with  the  exclamation,  "May  the  devil  sink 
me  into  flames,  if  the  French  should  come  over,  but  our 
religion  would  be  utterly  undone."  But  from  the  real  his- 
tory of  Lord  Hermand  similar  examj^les  might  be  gleaned 
—  quite  extreme  enough  to  justify  Goldsmith.    We  fiud 


EDINBURGH  AN  AGE  AGO.  143 

Lord  Cookburn  thus  describing  his  zeal  for  what  he  deemed 
sound  views,  in  the  famous  Sir  John  Leslie  case  :  — 

"  Hermand  was  in  a  glorious  frenzy.  Spuming  all  unfairness,  a 
religious  doubt,  entangled  with  mystical  metaphysics,  and  counto- 
nanced  by  his  party,  had  great  attractions  for  his  excitable  head 
and  Presbyterian  taste.  What  a  figure,  as  he  stood  on  the  floor 
declaiming  and  screaming  amidst  the  .divines!  —  the  tall  man,  with 
his  thin  powdered  locks  and  long  pigtail,  the  long  Court-of  Session 
cravat  flaccid  and  streaming  with  the  heat  and  the  obtrusive  linen ! 
The  published  report  makes  him  declare  that  the  '  belief  of  the  being 
and  perfections  of  the  Deity  is  the  solace  and  delight  of  my  life.' 
But  this  would  not  have  been  half  intense  enough  for  Hermand ;  and 
accordingly  his  words  were,  '  Sir,  I  have  sucked  in  the  being  and 
attributes  of  God  with  my  mother's  milk*  His  constant  and  affection- 
ate reverence  for  his  mother  exceeded  the  devotion  of  any  Indian 
for  his  idol ;  and  under  the  feeling,  he  amazed  the  house  by  main- 
taining (which  was  his  real  opinion)  that  there  was  no  apology  for 
infidelity,  or  even  for  religious  doubt,  because  no  good  or  sensible 
man  had  anything  to  do  except  to  be  of  the  religion  of  his  mother, 
which,  be  it  what  it  might,  was  always  best.  '  A  sceptic.  Sir,  I  hate  ! 
—  with  my  whole  heart  I  detest  him !  But,  Moderator,  I  love  a 
Turk.'" 

Such  was  one  of  the  characters  of  Edinburgh  not  more 
than  half  a  century  ago ;  and  yet  he  belongs  as  entirely  to 
an  extinct  state  of  thinacs  as  the  oldest  fossils  of  the  geol- 
ogist.  And  there  are  many  such  in  this  volume,  drawn 
with  all  the  breadth,  and  in  some  instances  all  the  pictur- 
esque effect,  of  the  best  days  of  the  drama.  But,  though 
a  thoroughly  amusing  volume,  it  is  also  something  greatly 
better;  and  there  is,  we  doubt  not,  a  time  coming  when 
the  student  of  history  will  look  to  it,  much  rather  than  to 
works  professedly  historic,  for  the  true  portraiture  of  Edin- 
burgh society  during  the  periods  in  which  it  maintained  its 
place  most  efficiently  in  the  worlds  of  literature  and  of 
science.  And  yet,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  sketch  just 
given,  all  was  not  admirable  in  the  ages  in  which  our  cap- 
ital excited  admiration  most;  and  we  must  just  console 


144  HISTORICAL   AXD   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

ourselves  by  the  reflection,  that,  though  we  live  in  a  more 
mediocre  time,  it  is  in  the  main  a  more  quietly  respectable 
one. 


XVII. 

BUBNS  FESTIVAL  AND  HERO  WORSHIP. 

"  The  Burns  Festival,"  writes  a  respected  correspond- 
ent in  the  west,  in  whose  veins  flows  the  blood  of  Gilbert 
Burns,  "  is  already  well-nigh  forgotten  in  Ayr."  We  are 
not  at  all  sure  that  it  ought  to  be  forgotten  so  soon.  Could 
we  but  look  just  a  little  below  the  surface  of  the  event, 
with  its  checkered  patchwork  of  the  bizarre  and  the  pic- 
turesque, and  its,  doubtless,  much  genuine  enthusiasm, 
blent  with  at  least  an  equal  anount  of  overstrained  and 
awkward  simulation,  we  might  possibly  discover  in  it  a 
lesson  not  unworthy  of  being  remembered.  Deep  below  the 
ridiculous  gaud  and  glitter,  we  may  find  occult  principles 
of  our  nature  at  work  in  this  commemorative  festival  —  prin- 
ciples which  have  been  active  throughout  every  period  of 
the  history  of  man,  —  which  gave  of  old  their  hero  gods  to 
the  Greek  and  the  Roman,  and  the  red-letter  saint  days  to 
the  calender  of  the  Papist;  and  which  in  these  latter  times 
we  may  see  scarce  less  active  than  ever  in  the  worlds  of 
politics  and  letters.  We  find  them  alike  developed  in  the 
"  hero-worship  "  of  Carlyle,  and  the  Pitt  and  Fox  dinners 
and  clubs  of  our  politicians. 

As^^  piece  of  mere  show,  the  festival  of  Burns,  like  the 
tournament  of  Lord  Eglinton,  was  singularly  unhappy 
Both  got  sadly  draggled  in  the  mud,  and  looked  like 
bepowdered  heaus  who  set  out  for  the  ballroom  in  their 
thin  shoes  and  silk  stockings,  and  are  overwhelmed  in  a 
thunder-shower  by  the   way.      Serious  earnest   stands  a 


THK  BURNS   FESTIVAL  AND   HERO   WORSHIP.         145 

ducking ;  mere  show  and  make-believe  becomes  ridiculoiis 
iu  the  wet.  The  92d  Highlanders  were  thorouglily  re- 
spectable at  Waterloo,  though  drenched  to  the  skin  ;  and 
we  have  seen  from  twelve  to  fifteen  thousand  of  their  de- 
vout countrymen  gathered  together  amid  their  wild  hills, 
in  storm  and  rain,  on  a  sacramental  Sabbath,  without 
appearing  in  the  slightest  degree  contemptible.  But  alas 
for  a  draggled  procession,  or  a  festival  first  dressed  up  in 
gumflowers  and  then  bespattered  with  mud  I  Processions 
and  festivals  cannot  stand  a  wetting.  Like  some  of  the 
cheap  stuffs  —  half  whitening  and  starch  —  of  the  cotton- 
weaver,  they  want  hody  for  it.  Their  respectability  is 
painfully  dependent  on  the  vicissitudes  of  the  barometer. 
Every  shower  of  rain  converts  itself  into  a  jest  at  their 
expense,  that  turns  the  laugh  against  them,  and  every 
flying  pellet  of  mud  becomes  a  j^ractical  joke.  And  as  the 
festival  of  Burns,  like  the  tournament  of  Eglinton,  got 
particularly  wet,  —  wet  till  it  streamed  and  smoked  like  a 
salt-pan,  and  the  water  that  streamed  downwards  from  ita 
nape  to  its  heels  discharged  the  dye  of  its  buckram  inex- 
pressibles on  its  white  silk  stockings,  and  flowed  over  the 
mouth  of  its  thin-soled  pumps,  —  it  returned  to  its  home 
in  the  evening,  looking,  it  must  be  confessed,  leather  ludi- 
crous than  gay.  It  encountered  the  accident  of  being 
splashed  and  rained  upon,  and  so  turned  out  a  failure. 
Nay,  even  previous  to  its  mishap,  there  were  visible  in 
the  getting-up  of  its  scene-work  certain  awkward-looking 
strings  and  wires,  that  did  not  appear  particularly  respect- 
able in  the  broad  daylight.  Its  prepared  lightning  took 
the  form  of  pounded  rosin  ;  and  the  mustard-mill  destined 
to  produce  its  tluuuler  was  suffered  to  obtrude  itself  all 
too  palpably  on  the  sight  of  the  public.  People  remarked, 
that  among  tlie  various  toasts  given  at  the  banquet,  there 
were  no  grateful  compliments  i:)aid,  no  direct  notice  taken, 
of  its  first  originators.  No  one  thought  of  toaSting  them. 
They  were  found  to  compose  part  of  the  vulgar  string- 
and-wire  work,  —  part  of  the  pounded  rosin  and  mustard- 
18 


146  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

mill  portion  of  the  exhibition ;  and  so,  according  to  the 
poet,  ~ 

"  What  would  offend  the  eye 
The  painter  threw  discreetly  into  shade/* 

But  it  is  well  to  remark  that  the  Burns  festival  had  an 
element  of  actual  j  ower  and  significancy  in  it,  altogether 
separate  and  apart  from  the  lowness  of  its  immediate  ori- 
gin, the  staring  rawness  of  its  rude  machinery,  or  the 
woful  ducking  in  which  it  made  its  ridiculous  exit.  It  is 
significant  that  the  mind  of  the  country  should  exist  in 
such  a  state  in  reference  to  the  memory  of  the  departed 
poet,  that  a  few  obscure  men  over  their  ale  could  have 
originated  such  a  display.  The  call  to  celebrate  by  a 
festival  the  memory  of  Burns,  seems,  with  reference  to 
those  from  whom  it  first  proceeded,  to  have  been  a  low 
and  vulgar  call ;  but  that  it  should  have  been  responded 
to  by  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands,  —  that  town  and 
village  should  have  poured  forth  their  inhabitants  to  the 
spectacle,  —  that  eminent  men  from  remote  parts  of  the 
country  should  have  flocked  to  it,  —  are  matters  by  no 
means  vulgar  or  low.  The  surface  of  the  pageant,  like  its 
origin,  seems  to  have  been  a  sufficiently  poor  afiair;  but 
underneath  that  surface  there  must  have  beat  a  living  and 
vigorous  heart,  neither  jioor  in  its  emotions  nor  yet  unin- 
teresting in  its  physiology. 

"We  would  recognize  in  it,  first  of  all,  the  singularly  pow- 
erful impression  made  by  the  character  of  Burns  on  the 
people  of  Scotland.  The  man  Burns  exists  as  a  large  idea 
in  the  national  mind,  altogether  independent  of  his  literary 
standing  as  the  writer  of  what  are  preeminently  the  na- 
tional songs.  Our  English  neighbors,  as  a  people  at  least, 
are  much  less  literary  than  ourselves.  The  fame  of  their 
best  writers  has  scarce  at  all  reached  the  masses  of  their 
population.  They  know  nothing  of  Addison  with  his 
exquisitely  classic  prose,  or  of  Pope  with  his  finished  and 
pointed  verse.    We  have  been  struck,  however,  by  finding 


THE   BURNS   FESTIVAL   AND   HERO   AVORSIIIP.         147 

it  remarked  by  an  English  writer,  who  lived  long  in  Lon- 
don, and  moved  much  among  the  common  people,  that  he 
found  in  the  popular  mind  well-marked  though  indistinct 
and  exaggerated  traces  of  at  least  one  great  English  au- 
thor. He  could  learn  nothing,  he  observed,  from  the  men 
who  drove  cabs  and  drays,  of  the  wits  and  scholars  of 
Queen  Anne,  or  of  the  much  greater  literati  of  the  previous 
century ;  nay,  they  seemed  to  know  scarce  anything  of 
living  genius ;  but  they  all  possessed  somehow  an  indistinct, 
shadowy  notion  of  one  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson,  —  a  large,  ill- 
dressed  man,  who  was  a  great  writer  of  they  knew  not 
what ;  and  almost  all  of  them  could  point  out  the  various 
places  in  which  he  had  lived,  and  the  house  in  which 
he  died.  Altogether  independently  of  his  writings  —  for 
these  are  far  from  being  of  a  popular  cast  —  the  doctor 
had  made  an  impression  by  the  sheer  bulk  and  energy  of 
his  character ;  he  loomed  large  and  imposing  simply  as  a 
man;  an  impression  of  the  strange  kingly  power  which  he 
possessed,  and  before  which  his  contemporaries,  the  Burkes 
and  Reynolds  and  Chai'les  James  Foxes  of  the  age,  were 
content  to  bow  acquiescent,  had  somehow  reached  the 
masses,  and  the  lapse  of  two  generations  had  failed  to 
eftace  it.  The  only  other  man  of  whom  the  author  of  the 
remark  found  similar  traces  among  the  common  people  of 
London  was  not  a  writer  at  all ;  but  he,  too,  far  excelled 
his  contemporaries  in  the  kingly  faculty,  and  stamped,  not 
on  the  mind  of  his  country  alone,  but  on  that  of  civilized 
man  everywhere,  the  impress  of  his  power.  The  men  who 
carried  about  with  them  this  curious  shadowy  idea  of 
Johnson  had  an  idea,  also  existing  in  exactly  similar  con- 
ditions, of  one  Oliver  Cromwell,  —  an  idea  of  some  kind 
of  undefinable  greatness  and  power,  not  exti'insic  and 
foreign  to  him,  but  inherent  and  self-derived,  and  before 
which  all  opposition  was  prostrated.  The  intrinsic  weight 
of  the  two  characters  had  sunk  their  imjjress  deep  into  the 
popular  memory.    And  on  a  similar  principle  has  the  pop* 


148  HISTORICAL  AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

ular  memory  been  impressed  in  Scotland  by  the  charactw 
of  Robert  Burns. 

Scotland  has  produced  many  men  eminent  for  literature 
and  philosophy,  —  exquisite  poets,  like  him  who  wrote  the 
"  Battle  of  the  Baltic,"  and  scholars  of  the  highest  reach, 
such  as  the  author  of  the  "  Franciscan ; "  the  history  of 
Hume  is  still  supereminently  the  English  History  ;  the 
novels  of  Scott  are  the  most  popular  fictions  ever  produced 
in  any  age  or  nation  ;  but  the  authors  of  these  works, 
though  great  writers,  were  not  properly  great  men.  Some 
of  them,  on  the  contrary,  were  rather  small  men.  Camp- 
bell was  decidedly  diminutive,  maugre  his  fine  genius  and 
exquisite  taste ;  Hume  was  merely  a  cold,  though  not  ill- 
tempered  sceptic,  who  enjoyed  life  at  his  leisure  and  grew 
fat ;  nor  would  Scott,  though  rather  a  happy-dispositioned, 
hospitable  country  gentleman,  who  made  money  and  then 
lost  it,  have  greatly  shone  as  a  hero  in  one  of  the  dramas 
of  Goethe  or  Shakspeare.  But,  altogether  independently 
of  his  writings,  the  character  of  Burns,  like  that  of  John- 
son, was  one  of  great  massiveness  and  power.  There  was 
a  cast  of  true  tragic  greatness  about  it.  Thei-e  was  a 
largeness  in  his  heart,  and  a  force  in  his  passions,  that 
corresponded  with  the  mass  of  his  intellect  and  the  vigor 
of  his  genius.  We  receive  just  such  an  impression  from 
reading  his  life  as  we  do  from  perusing  one  of  the  greater 
tragedies  of  Shakspeare.  Like  the  Othellos  or  Macbetha 
of  the  dramatist,  —  characters  that  fasten  upon  the  imag- 
ination and  sink  into  the  memory  from  causes  altogether 
unconnected  with  either  literary  taste  or  moral  feeling, — 
we  feel  in  him,  per  force,  an  interest  which  exists  and 
grows  alike  independently  of  the  excesses  into  which  hia 
passions  betrayed  him,  or  the  trophies  which  his  genius  ena- 
bled him  to  erect.  Burns  was  not  merely  a  distinguished 
poet, — he  was  a  man  on  a  large  scale;  and  the  festival 
of  the  present  month  bore  emphatic  testimony  to  the  fact 

It  is  not  uninstructive  to  mark  how  this  admiration  of 
the  merely  great  and  imposing  grows  upon  mankind,  until 


THE   BURNS   FESTIVAL   AND   HERO   WORSHIP.  149 

at  length,  at  the  distance  of  an  age  or  two,  the  departed 
great  man  reckons  among  his  semi- worshippers  individuals 
of  not  less  calibre  than  himself.  Burns  —  to  borrow  from 
Cowper's  allusion  to  Garrick  and  Garrick's  commemora- 
tive festival  at  Avon  —  "  was  himself  a  worshipper. '  "  Man 
praises  man  !  "  The  great  hero  of  the  poet  was  Robert  the 
Bruce.  He  was  selected  by  him  to  form  the  leading  char- 
acter in  his  projected  drama ;  we  find  frequent  allusions  to 
him  in  his  letters  and  journals  ;  and  the  most  spirit-stirring 
of  all  his  songs  is  the  address  of  the  hero  king  to  his  troops 
at  Bannockburn.  Now  we  have  seen  faithful  casts  of  the 
skulls  of  worshipper  and  worshipped  resting  side  by  side 
on  the  same  shelf  in  a  museum,  and  have  been  greatly  struck 
by  the  fact  that  they  should  have  existed  in  such  a  i*ela- 
tion  to  each  other.  The  worshipper,  if  there  be  a  shadow 
of  truth  in  the  science  that  professes  to  draw  conclusions 
from  the  material  organ  of  mind  regarding  the  energy  and 
direction  of  the  mind's  immaterial  workings,  must  have  been 
altogether  as  powerful  a  man  as  the  worshipped.  In  gen- 
eral size,  the  head  of  the  indomitable  king,  who  so  strongly 
impressed  his  character  on  a  rude  and  turbulent  age,  and 
the  head  of  the  not  less  indomitable  peasant,  who  in  an  age 
of  thinking  men  stamped  the  impress  of  his  scarce  less 
deeply,  exactly  resemble  one  another.  They  were  heads  of 
about  the  same  bulk  as  the  head  of  Dr.  Chalmers.  Both 
display  great  animal  power.  There  is  a  towering  organ 
of  firmness  in  the  head  of  the  monarch  which  we  miss  in 
that  of  the  poet,  and  larger  developments  of  caution  and 
hope  ;  but  in  imagination,  intellect,  benevolence,  the  scale 
predominates  greatly  on  the  other  side.  In  these  —  the 
man-like  faculties  —  the  worshipper  was  superior  to  his 
demi-god.  And  yet  he  was  a  worshipper.  The  felt  influ- 
ence of  greatness,  removed  by  distance,  —  that  identical 
influence  which  a  fortnight  since  drew  so  many  thousands 
to  the  Burns  festival,  —  had  been  operative  on  his  imagi- 
nation and  his  feelings  :  the  departed  hero  loomed  large  and 
imposing  through  the  magnifying  fogs  of  the  past ;  and 
13* 


150  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

the  worshipper,  though  not  greatly  disposed  to  yield  to 
contemporaries,  and  fully  aware  that  he  himself  was  no 
common  man,  never  once  suspected  that  the  object  of  hia 
worship  was  in  the  main  not  a  greater  man  than  himself, 
and  in  some  respects  an  inferior  one. 

Could  we  but  lay  open  the  inner  springs  of  this  tendency 
to  man-worship,  they  would  enable  us,  we  are  convinced, 
to  comprehend  many  a  curious  chapter  in  the  early  history 
of  the  species.  Departed  greatness,  enveloped  by  its  pecu- 
liar atmosphere  of  reverential  respect  and  awe,  and  exag- 
gerated by  distance,  is  suffered  to  retain  within  the  bright 
circle  of  its  halo  many  an  attendant  littleness  and  impurity 
that  contemporaries  would  have  at  least  not  admired.  The 
greatness  is  doubtless  the  staple  of  the  matter,  —  that  which 
dazzles,  impresses,  attracts ;  and  the  littlenesses  and  impu- 
rities, mere  accidents  that  have  mixed  with  it;  and  yet  how 
strange  a  tone  do  they  not  too  frequently  succeed  in  im- 
parting to  the  worship !  There  was  much  of  apology  at 
the  Burns  festival  for  the  errors  of  the  poet;  and  it  said 
at  least  something  for  the  morals  of  the  time,  whatever  it 
might  for  the  taste  of  the  speakers,  that  such  should  have 
been  the  case.  In  a  remoter  and  more  darkened  age  of 
the  world,  like  those  ages  in  which  hero  worship  ros;e  into 
religion,  the  errors  would  have  been  remembered,  but  the 
apology  would  have  been  wanting.  Burns  would  have 
been  deified  into  an  Apollo,  and  his  love  passages  with  the 
nymphs  Daphne,  Levcothoe,  and  Coronis,  and  his  drinking 
bouts  with  Admetus  and  Hyacinthus,  would  have  been 
registered  simply  as  incidents  in  his  history,  —  incidents 
which  in  the  coui*se  of  time  would  have  come  to  serve  as 
precedents  fov  his  worshippers.  We  are  afraid  that,  raau- 
gre  regret  and  apology,  there  is  too  much  of  this  as  it  is. 
His  hapless  errors,  so  fatal  to  himself,  have  been  too  often 
surveyed  though  the  dazzling  halo  of  his  celebrity.  The 
felt  influence  of  his  greatness  has  extended  to  his  flxults, 
as  if  they  were  part  and  parcel  of  that  greatness.  The 
atmosphere  of  the  sun  conceals  the  sun's  spots  from  the 


*HE  BURNS  FESTIVAL  AND  HERO   WORSHIP.  151 

unassisted  eye  of  the  observer;  but  the  atmosphere  of 
glory  that  surrounds  the  memory  of  Burns  has  not  had  a 
similar  effect.  To  many  at  least  it  has  the  effect  of  making 
his  blemishes  ajDpear  less  as  original  flaws  than  as  a  species 
of  beauty-spots,  of  a  fashion  to  be  imitated.  How  can  wo 
marvel  that  the  old  worshij^pers  of  the  offspring  of  Saturn 
or  of  Latona  should  have  imitated  their  gods  in  their 
crimes,  if  in  these  our  days  of  light,  with  the  model  of  a 
perfect  religion  before  our  eyes,  hero  worship  should  be 
found  to  exert,  as  of  old,  a  demoralizing  tendency !  But 
it  would  not  be  easy  to  say  where  more  emphatic  or  more 
honest  warning  could  be  found  on  this  head  than  in  tho 
writings  of  Barns  himself.  We  stake  his  own  deeply- 
mournful  prediction  of  the  fate  which  he  saw  awaiting  him 
against  all  ever  advanced  on  the  opposite  side  :  — 

"  The  poor  inhabitant  below 
Was  quick  to  learn,  and  wise  to  know, 
And  keenly  felt  tlie  social  glow 

And  safter  flame; 
But  thoughtless  follies  laid  him  low, 

And  stained  his  name." 

Despite  the' authority  of  high  names,  we  are  no  admirers 
of  hero  worship.  We  are  not  insensible  to  what  we  may 
term  the  natural  claims  of  Barns  on  the  admiration  of  his 
country,  both  as  a  writer  and  as  a  character  of  great  bulk 
and  power.  It  would  be  hypocrisy  in  us  to  say  that  wo 
were.  Were  his  writings  to  be  annihilated  to-morrow,  wo 
could  restore  from  memory  some  of  the  best  of  them  entire, 
and  not  a  few  of  the  more  striking  passages  in  many  of  the 
others.  Nor  are  we  unimpressed  by  the  massiveness  of 
his  character  as  a  man.  We  bear  about  with  us  an  ad« 
equate  idea  of  it,  as  developed  in  that  deeply-mournful 
tnigedy,  his  life.  But  we  would  not  choose  to  go  and 
worship  at  his  festival.  Tliei-e  was  a  hollowness  about  the 
ceremony,  independently  of  the  falseness  of  the  principles 
on  which  its  ritual  was  framed.     Of  the  thousands  who  at- 


152  HISTORICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL. 

tended,  how  many,  does  the  reader  think,  wouhl  have  sym- 
pathized, liad  they  seen  the  light  some  fifty  years  earlier, 
with  the  man  Robert  Burns  ?  How  many  of  them  grap- 
pled in  idea  at  his  festival  with  other  than  a  more  phan- 
tom of  the  imagination  —  a  large  but  intangible  shade, 
obscure  and  indefinable  as  that  conjured  up  by  the  unin- 
formed Londoner  of  Cromwell  or  of  Johnson  ?  Rather 
more  than  fifty  years  ago,  the  sinking  sun  shone  brightly, 
one  fine  afternoon,  on  the  stately  tenements  of  Dumfries, 
and  threw  its  slant  rule  of  light  athwart  the  principal 
street  of  the  town.  The  shadows  of  the  houses  on  the 
western  side  were  stretched  half  way  across  the  pavement ; 
while  on  the  side  opposite,  the  red  beam  seemed  as  if 
sleeping  on  jutting  irregular  fronts  and  tall  gables.  There 
was  a  world  of  well-dressed  company  that  evening  in 
Dumfries ;  for  the  aristocracy  of  the  adjacent  country  for 
twenty  miles  round  had  poured  in  to  attend  a  county  ball, 
and  were  fluttering  in  groups  along  the  sunny  side  of  the 
street,  gay  as  buttei-flies.  On  the  other  side,  in  the  shade, 
a  solitary  individual  paced  slowly  along  the  pavement. 
Of  the  hundreds  who  fluttered  past,  no  one  took  notice  of 
him ;  no  one  seemed  to  recognize  him.  He  was  known  to 
them  all  as  the  exciseman  and  poet  Robert  Burns  ;  but  he 
had  ofiended  the  stately  Toryism  of  the  district  by  the 
freedom  of  his  political  creed  ;  and  so  tainted  by  the 
plague  of  Liberalism,  he  lay  under  strict  quarantine.  He 
was  shunned  and  neglected ;  for  it  was  with  the  man 
Burns  that  these  his  contemporaries  had  to  deal.  Let  the 
reader  contrast  with  this  truly  melancholy  scene  the  scene 
of  his  festival  a  fortnight  since.  Here  are  the  speeches  of 
the  Earl  of  Eglinton  and  Sir  John  M'Neil,  and  here  the 
toast  of  the  Lord  Justice  General.  Let  us  just  imagine 
these  gentlemen,  with  all  their  high  aristocratic  notions 
about  them,  carried  back  half  a  century  into  the  j^ast,  and 
dropped  down,  on  the  sad  evening  to  which  we  refer, 
in  the  main  street  of  Dumfries.  Which  side,  does  the 
reader  think,  would  they  have  chosen  to  walk  upon? 


THE  BURNS   FESTIVAL  AND   HERO   WORSHIP.         153 

Would  they  have  addressed  the  one  solitary  individual  in 
the  shade,  or  not  rather  joined  themselves  to  the  gay 
groujDS  in  the  sunshine  who  neglected  and  contemned 
him  ?  They  find  it  an  easy  matter  to  deal  with  the  phan- 
tom idea  of  Burns  now ;  how  would  they  have  dealt  with 
the  man  then  ?  How  are  they  dealing  with  his  poorer 
relatives ;  or  how  with  men  of  kindred  genius,  their  contem- 
poraries? Alas  !  a  moment's  glance  at  such  matters  is  suf- 
ficient to  show  how  very  unreal  a  thing  a  commemorative 
feast  may  be.  Reality,  even  in  idea,  becomes  a  sort  of 
Ithuriel  spear  to  test  it  by.  The  Burns  festival  was  but 
an  idle  show,  at  which  players  enacted  their  parts. 

There  is  another  score  on  which  we  dislike  hero  worship. 
We  deem  it  a  sad  misapplication  of  an  inherent  disposition 
of  the  mind,  imparted  for  the  most  solemnly  important  of 
purposes.  "  Man  worships  man,"  says  Cowpcr.  The  ten- 
dency, either  directly  or  in  its  efifects,  we  find  indicated  in 
almost  every  page  of  the  history  of  the  species.  We  see 
it  in  every  succeeding  period,  from  its  times  of  full  devel- 
opment, when  the  men-gods  of  the  Greek  were  worshipped 
by  sacrifice  and  oblation,  down  to  the  times  of  the  Shak- 
speare  jubilee  at  Stratford-on-Avon,  or  the  times  of  the 
Burns  festival  at  Ayr.  But  the  sentiment,  thus  active  in 
expatiating  in  false  direction,  has  a  true  direction  in  which 
to  expatiate,  and  a  worthy  object  on  which  to  fix.  As  if  to 
dash  the  dull  and  frigid  dreams  of  the  Socinian,the  instinct 
of  man  worship  may  find  a  true  man  worthy  the  adoration 
of  all,  and  who  reigns  over  the  nations  as  their  God  and 
king.  Every  other  species  of  man  worship  is  a  robbery  of 
Him.  It  is  a  worship  that  belongs  of  right  to  the  man 
Christ  Jesus  alone,  —  the  "  God  whose  throne  is  for  ever 
and  ever,"  and  whom  "  all  the  angels  of  God  woi'ship," 


POLITICAL  AND  SOCIAL. 


I. 

OUR  WORKING  CLASSES. 

Nevee  in  the  history  of  the  world  have  so  many  efforts 
been  made  to  improve  the  condition  of  the  working  classes 
as  at  the  pressnt  time.  The  legislator,  the  philanthropist, 
the  city  missionary,  the  theorist,  who  would  do  his  best  to 
uproot  the  very  foundations  of  our  social  system,  and  the 
man  of  practice,  who  would  spare  no  exertion  to  ameliorate 
its  actual  condition,  have  been  at  woi"k,  each  in  his  several 
direction,  honestly,  earnestly,  and  unremittingly  toiling  to 
a  single  purpose,  —  the  elevation  of  our  working  people. 
We  have  passed  laws ;  we  have  devised  model  dwellings  ; 
we  have  sent  pious  men  to  hunt  out  ignorance  and  vice ; 
we  have  schemed  out  theories  that  would  mow  down  the 
institutions  of  ages ;  we  have  speculated  in  the  direction 
of  secular  socialism  and  in  the  direction  of  Christian  so- 
cialism ;  we  have  tried  cooperative  societies,  building  soci- 
eties, and  model  lodgings  ;  we  have  written,  lectured,  and 
taught ;  we  have  appointed  commissions,  printed  acres 
of  reports ;  pried  into  every  hole  and  corner  of  society 
(except  the  convents)  ;  we  have  exported  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  what  we  termed,  only  a  year  or  two  back, 
ow  "surplus  population;"  we  have  raised  wages,  dimin- 
ished competition,  and  founded  magnificent  colonies  with 
t*  ose  who  were  too  many  at  home  j  we  have  done  these 


OUR   WORKING   CLASSES.  155 

and  many  other  things ;  and  what  has  been  the  result  ? 
Have  we  moved  the  living  mass  of  our  work-people  a  single 
step  higher  in  the  scale  of  moral  existence  ?  Have  we 
taught  them  wisdom  as  well  as  knowledge  ?  Have  we 
taught  them  to  be  provident,  and  to  manage  their  own 
affairs  with  prudence  and  discretion  ?  Have  we  placed 
them  in  circumstances  where  they  fulfil  their  duties  as 
men?  Have  we,  in  fact,  succeeded,  after  all  our  labors, 
in  promoting  the  genuine  welfare  of  the  working  popula- 
tion ?  To  answer  this  question  either  with  a  summary 
affirmative  or  with  an  emphatic  No,  would  be  out  of  place. 
That  all  the  expended  labor  has  been  wasted  and  thrown 
away,  we  cannot  for  a  moment  believe ;  but  it  is  equally 
certain  that  the  ])resent  condition  of  our  working  classes 
is  preeminently  unsatisfactory,  and  that  no  such  general 
improvement  has  taken  place  as  would  entitle  us  to  say 
that  we  had  arrived  at  the  true  solution  of  this  great  social 
problem.  Two  things  there  are  which,  in  every  condition 
of  life,  mark  the  wellbeiug  of  society  ;  namely,  the  integrity 
of  the  family,  and  the  sufficiency  of  the  dwelling.  The 
family  is  the  foundation  of  everything,  —  the  root  out  of 
which  the  social  world  grows.  Break  it  up,  and  you  have 
as  certainly  introduced  a  corrupting  poison  into  the  frame- 
w^ork  of  the  community,  as  if  you  had  inoculated  the  hu- 
man frame  with  a  deadly  and  malignant  agent  that  destroys 
the  very  issues  of  life.  The  whole  of  our  factory  system 
where  women  are  employed  is  merely  a  systematic  de- 
struction of  the  family,  —  practical  socialism,  in  foct,  which 
prepares  the  way  for  theoretic  socialism  of  the  direst  and 
most  disastrous  tendency,  atheistic  and  material,  without 
natural  affection,  without  law,  without  order,  without  the 
thousand  amenities  of  domestic  life.  It  matters  little 
whether  the  women  are  employed  as  married,  or  only  aa 
unmarried.  If  married  women  are  engaged  in  factory 
works,  they  of  course  neglect  their  children,  who,  between 
the  period  of  childhood  and  that  of  labor,  have  the  edu- 
cation of  the  public  streets,  with  its  unconcealed  vice,  its 


1?)6  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

oaths  and  curses,  its  idleness  and  its  vagabondism.  We 
have  only  to  go  into  our  streets  in  the  lower  quarters  of 
any  of  our  towns  to  be  painfully  assured  that  every  one 
is  a  broad  road  to  destruction  for  the  young,  and  that  no 
mere  school-education  can  ever  effectually  compete  with 
the  force  of  evil  habit,  any  more  than  wholesome  food  will 
eSectually  nourish  those,  who  dwell  continually  in  a  pol- 
luted atmosphere.  We  ai"e  all  aware  that  the  decent  por- 
tion of  our  country  population  look  with  absolute  horror 
on  the  habitual  circumstances  of  a  town  life.  And  why 
so?  Is  it  not  because  in  their  country  dwellings  they 
have  been  accustomed  to  the  sacred  integrity  of  the  family, 
and  that  their  isolated  cottage  was  a  home,  containing 
father,  mother,  and  children  :  God's  first  institute,  —  a. 
family  ?  The  cottage  may  be  small,  ill-thatched,  ill-venti- 
lated, ill-floored,  and  smoky ;  it  may  have  its  dubs,  itp 
puddles,  and  its  national  midden;  it  may  be  high  u])  on  ? 
hill,  where  winter  blasts  and  winter  snows  are  more  famil- 
iar than  blue  skies  or  green  fields  ;  or  it  may  be  down  in  & 
glen,  miles  away  from  other  mortal  habitation,  —  so  soli- 
tary that  every  stranger  who  appears  is  a  spectacle  and 
amazement  to  the  children.  No  matter :  wherever  or 
whatever  it  may  be,  it  is  a  home,  and  contains  a  family, 
every  member  of  which  would  look  with  instinctive  liorror 
at  the  indiscriminate  sort  of  existence  common  in  many 
of  our  towns.  Thanks  to  the  bothy  system,  however,  this 
feeling  of  family  sacredness  is  beginning  to  be  eradicated 
out  of  even  our  rural  population  ;  and  perhaps  in  time  a 
certain  portion  of  our  peasantry  may  be  duly  brought  to 
believe  that  the  family  is  a  supei-fluous  invention,  after 
which  they  will  be  fit  for  anything,  and  good  for  nothing. 
The  same  principle  jDcrvades  every  rank  of  society,  high  oi 
low.  Where  the  family  is  broken  up,  —  whether  from 
what  are  termed  the  necessities  of  trade,  from  polygamous 
customs,  from  fashionable  usages,  or  from  particular  acci- 
dents,—  evil  follows  as  a  regular  and  constant  efiect.  Of 
all  the  social  laws  that  have  ever  been  discovered,  thii? 


OUR  WORKn^G  CLASSES.  157 

IS  the  most  indisputably  certain,  that  the  family  is  an  insti- 
tution of  nature,  an  organized  association  established  im- 
mutably by  God's  providence  for  the  welfare  of  mankind. 
What,  we  ask,  is  it  that  has  made  the  most  powerful  mon- 
arch in  the  world  the  most  universally  and  enthusiastically 
popular  among  her  subjects?  It  is  neither  her  power  nor 
her  possession  of  thp  imperial  throne.  It  is  the  splendor 
of  the  wife  and  mother,  beaming  with  a  light  fir  brighter 
than  a  kohinoor,  and  carrying  to  every  subject-land  and 
to  every  subject-household  the  royal  proclamation  that 
the  family  is  respected  by  the  thi'one,  and  that  raonarchs 
themselves  may  find  their  truest  happiness  in  those  insti- 
tutes of  God  which  are  common  to  the  humblest  house- 
hold that  obeys  their  sway.  The  preservation  of  the  family 
in  its  full  integrity  we  regard  as  the  first  absolute  requisite, 
without  which  there  can  be  no  permanent  improvement, 
and  without  which  all  efforts  to  ameliorate  the  condition 
of  our  working  classes  must  certainly  fail. 

Next  to  the  family  comes  the  dwelling.  As  dress  is  the 
clothing  of  the  individual,  so  is  the  house  the  clothing  of 
the  family.  It  ought  to  be  sufficient,  —  sufficient  for  all 
the  purposes  of  family  life,  — for  decency,  for  convenience, 
for  warmth,  for  shelter,  for  washing  and  cooking,  for  retire- 
ment, and  for  the  separation  of  the  sexes.  Here  society 
has  foiled.  It  is  idle  to  speak  of  sanitary  reform,  and  almost 
idle  to  speak  of  moral  reform,  when  we  comtemplate  the 
dwellings  of  a  large  portion  of  the  working  population. 
We  can  no  more  expect  propriety  of  conduct  in  the  in- 
dividual if  we  clothe  him  in  rags,  and  keep  him  in  rags, 
than  we  can  expect  propriety  of  conduct  in  a  family  that 
lives  habitually  in  the  wretched  lodgments  which  disgrace 
our  towns  and  cities.  For  our  towns,  however,  there  is 
some  excuse.  They  have  increased  so  rapidly  in  popu- 
lation, that  the  supply  of  house-room  did  not,  and  could  not, 
under  the  ordinary  course  of  private  speculation,  equal 
the  demand.  When  Ireland  was  pouring  her  thousands 
into  Glasgow,  and  the  Highlands  were  undergoing  the 
14 


158  POLITICAL  AND  SOCIAL. 

process  of  clearing,  it  could  not  be  expected  that  more 
than  the  very  meanest  accommodation  should  be  obtained 
by  such  a  class.  The  past  must  be  palliated  ;  but  now 
that  the  pressure  is  in  a  great  measure  over,  and  a  breath- 
ing-time is  afforded  by  the  stream  of  emigration  setting 
no  longer  from  the  country  to  the  town,  but  out  of  the 
kingdom  to  the  colonies  and  the  United  States,  we  can 
conceive  no  object  on  which  society  may  more  profitably 
fix  its  attention  than  on  the  systematic  improvement  of 
the  dwellings  of  the  industrial  classes.  A  universal  crusade 
against  every  tenement  that  did  not  afford  the  proper 
requisites  of  domestic  life  would  be  at  least  one  step  to- 
wards the  desirable  result.  But  this  would  be  insufficient. 
It  would  be  only  a  negative  reform,  and  all  negative  reforms 
are  insufficient.  It  would  be  only  cutting  off  the  evil, 
whereas  the  true  object  is  to  produce  the  good.  If  we 
were  to  pull  down  every  tenement  that  did  not  fulfil  even 
the  moderate  conditions  that  would  in  all  probability  be 
fixed  by  the  Government,  we  should  only  have  rendered  our 
working  people  houseless.  We  must  devise  some  plan  by 
which  proper  buildings  shall  be  erected,  and  insure  the 
future  wellbeing  of  the  people  by  a  systematic  scheme, 
that  could  not  legally  be  departed  from  within  the  limits 
of  any  town  containing  a  given  number  of  inhabitants. 
What  is  already  evil  we  must  reform  as  best  we  may ;  but 
what  is  future  we  ought  intelligently  to  design  —  to  leave 
nothing  to  accident,  nothing  to  the  hazards  of  avaricious 
speculation ;  but,  duly  considering  what  is  needed,  to  pro- 
vide for  it  beforehand  with  a  wise  precaution,  which  in 
course  of  time  would  react  powerfully  on  the  whole  habits 
and  manners  of  the  laboring  community. 

We  believe,  however,  that  we  have  reached  a  turning- 
point  in  our  downward  course,  —  that  we  have  passed  the 
worst,  —  and  that  there  is,  both  in  the  legislature  and  in 
society  at  large,  a  very  general  desire  to  favor  the  requisite 
improvements,  provided  it  could  be  clearly  shown  what  the 
improvements  should  consist  of,  and  upon  what  principle 


OUR  WORKING   CLASSES.  159 

they  should  be  undertaken.  When  we  find  men  like  the 
Duke  of  Buecleuch  candidly  confessing  —  to  his  honor  be 
it  spoken  —  that  he  had  done  wrong  in  so  long  neglecting 
the  dwellings  of  the  smaller  tenantry,  cottars,  and  bothy- 
men,  —  when  we  find  Mr.  Stuart  of  Oathlaw  succeeding 
in  banding  together  some  of  the  most  influential  and  exten- 
sive landed  proprietors  for  the  purpose  of  improving  the 
dwellings  in  the  country  districts,  —  and  when  we  find  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Mackenzie  of  North  Leith  only  stopped  in  his 
career  of  practical  benevolence  by  the  absurd  and  anti- 
quated usages  of  feudal  lawyerisra,  —  we  are  not  without 
ground  for  hope  that  a  general  movement  may  be  made  at 
no  very  distant  period,  and  that  we  may  see  model  towns 
not  only  projected,  but  actually  erected,  inhabited,  and  in 
vital  operation.  Without  the  integrity  of  the  family  and 
the  sufficiency  of  the  dwelling  there  can  be  no  satisfactory 
reform,  either  in  a  sanitary  or  a  moral  aspect ;  and  we 
propose  in  a  future  article  to  discuss  some  of  the  main 
causes  that  have  led  to  the  present  condition  of  our  work- 
ing population.  We  propose  to  inquire  whether,  and  in 
what  circumstances,  the  laboring  agriculturist  or  artisan 
might  profitably  be  the  proprietor  of  his  dwelling,  and  how 
far  the  acquisition  of  real  property  might  operate  as  a 
check  on  the  habitual  improvidence  that  is  proven  to  exist. 
Among  all  the  experiments  that  have  been  made,  at  least  in 
this  country,  it  is  plainly  evident  that  a  vast  field,  and  that 
certainly  not  the  most  unpromising,  has  been  left  untouched 
and  unexplored.  To  promote  the  habit  of  providence  in 
our  working  classes,  it  is  not  only  necessary  to  exhibit  a 
moral  restriction  which  cautions  them  from  going  wrong, 
but  to  present  a  positive  stimulus  which  induces  them  to 
go  right,  —  to  exhibit  something  good  before  their  eyes, 
after  which  they  shall  strive,— rand  to  make  them  act  of 
their  own  free  will,  as  if  they  had  an  object  to  attain. 
This  stimulus  may  possibly  be  found  in  the  desire  to  pos- 
sess real  property;  and  although  no  mere  change  of  laws 
or  circumstances  may  ever  do  more  than  facilitate  the 


160  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

progress  of  good,  it  is  quite  possible  that  a  change  of  cir- 
cumstances might  eminently  promote  a  change  of  habits, 
and  lead  gradually  but  surely  to  a  more  enlightened  ap- 
preciation of  the  advantages  that  might  accrue  if  the  pres- 
ent recklessness  and  extravagance  were  exchanged  for 
prudence  and  economy. 


II. 

PEASANT  PROPERTIES. 

In  our  present  observations  on  peasant  properties,  we  do 
not  intend  to  inquire  into  the  ethics  of  the  question.  We  do 
not  ask  whether  it  was  morally  right  or  morally  wrong  for 
England  to  pursue  that  vast  system  of  inclosure  by  which 
the  English  peasantry  were  permanently  ejected  from 
their  commons,  and  deprived  of  their  prescriptive  rights  ; 
or  whether  it  was  right  or  wrong  for  the  legislature  and 
the  Highland  proprietors  to  convert,  by  a  fiction  of  law, 
what  was  once  to  all  intents  and  purposes  the  property  of 
the  clans  into-the  private  domains  of  individual  landlords, 
thereby  disinheriting  all  save  the  chief  and  his  family. 
These  questions  are  practically  settled ;  the  facts  are 
achieved;  society  has  accepted  them;  and  it  is  now  useless 
to  speculate  on  what  might  have  been  the  result  if  a  dif- 
ferent principle  had  pervaded  the  arrangements.  Within 
a  century  and  a  half  a  vast  revolution  has  been  wrought 
in  the  occupation  of  the  lands  both  of  England  and  Scot- 
land. By  the  inclosure  of  the  commons,  about  five  thou- 
sand parishes,  constituting  nearly  a  half  of  the  soil  of 
England,  were  subjected  to  a  legal  process  which  severed 
the  peasant  from  all  direct  intei*est  in  the  land,  and  left  it 
ultimately  in  the  hands  of  large  proprietors.     And  by  the 


PEASANT  PROPERTIES.  161 

introduction  of  the  English  doctrine  of  property  into  the 
BLighlands,  the  old  system  of  customary  occupation  was 
entirely  superseded,  and  a  new  sj'Stem  substituted  which 
threw  vast  territories  into  the  absolute  control  of  single 
individuals,  who  had  previously  been  only  the  representa- 
tives of  their  tribe,  and  who  had  held  the  lands  not  as 
their  own,  but  in  virtue  of  their  office  as  chiefs  or  petty 
sovereigns,  who  ruled  over  a  given  district,  and  adminis- 
tered the  public  affairs  of  the  clan.  These  measures  have 
produced  a  radical  change  in  the  whole  structure  of  soci- 
ety. The  first,  by  leading  to  the  absorf)tion  of*the  smaller 
properties,  abolished  the  English  yeoman  ;  and  the  second 
bids  fair  to  abolish  the  Highland  population.  Both  mea- 
sures had  essentially  the  same  result  in  one  respect,  — 
essentially  a  different  result  in  another.  They  both  left 
a  country  population  composed  of  a  very  small  number  of 
great  landed  proprietors,  surrounded  by  a  dependent  and 
almost  subject  tenantry,  outside  of  which  remained  the 
mass  of  those  who  live  by  labor  alone,  who  have  been  cast 
loose  from  nil  interest  in  the  soil,  and  who  are  regarded  as 
machines  for  the  execution  of  work.  In  this  respect  the 
results  have  been  similar  in  the  two  countries.  But  a  very 
striking  difference  presents  itself  to  view  when  we  turn 
our  attention  to  the  soil  itself,  and  ask  how  it  has  been 
affected  by  the  change.  In  England  the  pretext  for  the 
inclosure  of  the  commons  was,  that  the  land  was  uncul- 
tivated, and  to  a  great  extent  unproductive.  This  was 
actually  true,  and,  being  so,  it  was  a  good  and  sufficient 
reason  for  the  introduction  of  some  new  system  by  Avhich 
the  lands  should  be  brought  into  cultivation.  Still,  even 
supposing  that  the  produce  after  the  inclosure  was  five  or 
ten  times  greater  than  before,  it  was  more  advantageous 
to  the  peasantry  —  that  is,  to  the  great  body  of  the  rai*al 
population — to  have  only  the  fifth  or  the  tenth  as  their 
own  than  to  be  deprived  of  it  altogether,  and  to  see  ten 
times  the  produce  passing  into  the  hands  of  the  great 
landlords  and  gi-eat  agriculturists.  The  lands,  however, 
14* 


162  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

were  cultivated,  and  the  produce  was  obtained  ;  so  that 
although  the  English  peasant  was  ousted  from  his  common 
rights,  the  land  was  turned  to  its  proper  agricultural  use, 
and  grew  corn  for  the  service  of  the  nation.  The  land- 
lords and  farmers  acquired  wealth,  the  peasants  went  on 
the  parish,  and  were  supported  by  the  parish  rates.  In 
Scotland  the  effect  has  been  entirely  of  an  opposite  char- 
acter. The  lands,  instead  of  being  brought  into  cultivation, 
have  been  thrown  out  of  cultivation.  The  cottage  and 
the  croft  have  been  herried  to  make  way  for  grouse  and 
deer;  and,  so  far  as  the  production  of  food  is  concerned, 
—  food  available  for  the  ordinary  purposes  of  life,  —  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  acres  that  once  grew  and  supported 
soldiers  second  to  none  who  ever  stpeped,  might  as  well 
be  sunk  in  the  bottom  of  the  sea.  Not  only  are  they  not 
cultivated,  but  in  some  cases  they  are  not  even  to  be  seen. 
What,  then,  is  to  be  the  termination  of  this  course,  that 
has  been  gradually  but  surely  working  an  entire  change  in 
the  relations  of  the  British  population  to  the  British  soil  ? 
The  number  of  j^roprietors  has  been  constantly  diminish- 
ing, and  the  land  is  passing  into  fewer  and  fewer  hands. 
If  the  process  were  to  continue,  a  time  might  come  when 
the  very  stability  of  the  state  itself  might  be  endangered, 
and  a  change  of  system  would  be  imperatively  required 
for  the  safety  of  the  nation.  Already  many  parts  of  the 
country  are  both  materially  and  martially  ranch  weaker 
than  at  any  former  period.  They  can  neither  turn  out 
the  same  amount  of  food  for  the  support  of  the  nation, 
nor  the  same  number  of  men  for  the  national  labor  or  the 
national  defence.  Irl  other  districts  where  the  population 
is  dense,  the  stature  of  the  people  has  diminished ;  that  is, 
the  people  are  undergoing  a  course  of  physical  deteriora- 
tion. Great  numbers  of  our  healthiest,  strongest,  and 
most  athletic  sons  are  emigrating ;  for  it  is  no  longer  the 
half-starved  pauper  who  emigrates,  but  the  very  pick  of 
our  industrial  classes.  The  nation,  powerful  as  it  is,  and 
perhaps  presuming  a  little  too  much  on  its  past  career,  is 


PEASANT  PROPERTIES.  163 

certainly  at  the  present  time  undergoing  a  process  of  de- 
bilitation, —  becoming  relatively  weaker ;  increasing  in 
wealth,  but  not  improving,  or  even  maintaining,  the  solid 
element  of  a  well-arranged  and  well-conditioaed  popula- 
tion. 

To  arrest  the  progress  of  this  growing  evil,  various  rem- 
edies have  been  proposed.  Some  have  asserted  that  a  total 
abolition  of  entails  would  effectually  prevent  the  accumu- 
lation of  estates  into  the  hands  of  a  single  proprietor;  for- 
getting that  the  estates  have  been  so  accumulated  simply 
because  the  large  estates  were  entailed,  and  the  small 
estates  were  not  entailed  ;  and  that  the  usual  purchaser, 
whenever  land  is  exposed  for  sale,  is  either  a  great  proprie- 
tor or  a  great  capitalist.  When  an  evil  has  grown  to  a 
certain  point,  it  will  perpetuate  itself,  like  iron,  which, 
when  heated  to  a  certain  temperature,  will  burn  of  its  own 
accord.  In  the  present  condition  of  Britain,  the  abolition 
of  entails  would  be  quite  as  likely  to  throw  the  land  into 
fewer  hands  as  to  increase  the  number  of  landholders,  be- 
cause the  great  proprietors,  who  have  large  revenues,  or 
almost  unlimited  credit,  will  give  more  for  the  land  than 
its  actual  mercantile  worth,  estimated  by  the  rate  of  inter- 
est that  might  be  derived  from  other  investments.  The 
abolition  of  entails  would  in  all  probability  only  transfer 
the  estates  of  the  impoverished  families  to  those  who  are 
already  possessed  of  extensive  domains.  There  would  be 
no  tendency  to  subdivision,  because  the  offer  of  ten  thou- 
sand pounds  for  a  small  property  that  was  only  worth  five 
thousand  would  be  no  temptation  to  a  lord  or  duke  who 
has  perhaps  a  clear  income  of  a  hundred  thousand  a  year, 
and  whose  object  is  not  to  get  money,  but  to  get  more 
land.  That  the  abolition  of  entails  would  lead  to  the 
sale  of  land  in  such  portions  as  would  be  convenient  to 
the  purchaser,  —  that  a  farmer,  for  instance,  who  had  been 
saving  and  successful,  could  go  to  his  landlord  and  buy 
his  farm  at  a  fair  market-price,  as  he  would  buy  a  house  or 
a  ship,  —  we  certainly  do  not  anticipate  ;  for  if  the  farm  lay 


164  POLITICAL  AND    SOCIAL. 

in  the  centre  of  an  estate,  the  proprietor  would  not  sell  it 
for  ten  times  its  estimated  value ;  nay,  he  would  not  sell  it 
at  all.  The  mere  abolition  of  entails,  therefore,  although 
in  itself  a  good  and  proper  measure,  would  not  be  calcu- 
lated to  work  any  great  change  for  the  general  welfare. 
It  might  relieve  some  spendthrift  families  from  the  incon- 
venience of  estates  which  they  were  unable  to  manage  or 
redeem,  and  it  might  infuse  new  capital  into  the  agricul- 
tural improvements  of  the  country  ;  but  that  it  would 
materially  affect  the  mass  of  the  rural  population  to  their 
advantage  is  by  no  means  probable.  At  the  same  time, 
the  total  abolition  of  every  remnant  of  the  feudal  syatem 
and  of  feudal  practice  in  land  conveyance  is  perhaps  the 
first  step  to  improvement. 

Another  proposed  remedy  is  the  formation  of  peasant 
properties,  —  a  measure  that  has  vehement  advocates,  and 
quite  as  vehement  opponents,  even  among  those  who  are 
supposed  impartially  to  have  investigated  the  subject. 
Mr.  M'Culloch,  carried  away  with  the  one  idea  of  cultiva- 
tion on  a  large  scale,  assures  us  that  anything  like  peasant 
proprietorship  would  submerge  us  into  a  sea  of  pauperism, 
Mr.  Joseph  Kay,  on  the  contrary,  whose  ability  we  take  to 
be  quite  equal  to  that  of  Mr.  M'Culloch,  and  whose  oj^por- 
tunities  for  extensive,  accurate,  and  personal  observation 
we  apprehend  to  have  been  even  superior,  assures  us  that 
the  measure  would  tend  to  make  our  poorer  classes  happy, 
prudent,  and  prosperous.  Mr.  M'Culloch's  objections  we 
regard  as  a  long  course  of  special  pleading,  based  on  the 
fallacy  of  taking  a  small  portion  of  the  population  as  the 
index  of  the  whole.  It  is  quite  easy  to  point  to  one  of  our 
large  farms,  or  to  our  whole  system  of  large  farming,  and 
to  compare  the  amount  of  produce  with  the  amount  ob- 
tained from  the  labor  of  the  same  number  of  individuals 
in  France,  Germany,  or  Ireland.  From  such  premises, 
however,  the  conclusion  is  a  mere  partial  inference  from 
insufficient  data.  It  is  quite  easy  to  point  to  one  of  our 
regiments,  and  to  admire  the  order,  cleanliness,  and  seeming 


PEASANT   PROPERTIES.  165 

perfection  of  the  military  organization,  just  as  Mr.  Carlyle 
adduces  the  line-of-battlc  ship  as  an  instance  of  indubitable 
success,  and  asks  why  the  same  system  is  not  universally 
introduced  into  the  field  of  labor.  But  human  nature  is 
neither  composed  of  regiments  nor  of  line-of-battle  ships, 
nor  of  any  select  body  of  men  from  whom  the  very  young, 
the  very  old,  the  halt,  the  lame,  and  the  blind  are  sedulously 
and  intentionally  excluded.  When  we  look  at  a  regiment, 
we  must  ask  not  only  what  is  the  condition  of  these  young 
men,  but  what  is  the  condition  of  their  svives,  their  chil- 
dren, and  their  aged  parents  ?  Muster  the  whole  on  parade ; 
let  us  inspect  the  whole ;  and  then  we  shall  be  able  to  form 
an  opinion  as  to  the  success  of  the  system.  And  so,  also, 
when  Mr.  M'Culloch  tells  us  to  look  at  the  success  of  our 
large  properties  and  large  farms,  let  us  look  at  the  whole  pop- 
ulation ;  let  us  look  at  the  fact,  that,  at  the  very  moment  of 
his  writing,  about  every  tenth  person  in  Enland  was  a 
pauper ;  let  us  look  at  our  prisons,  our  poor-laws,  our  union 
workhouses,  our  poisonings  for  the  sake  of  burial-fees,  our 
emigration,  as  if  our  people  were  flying  like  rata,  helter- 
skelter,  from  a  drowning  ship.  Let  us  sum  up  the  whole, 
and  then  perhaps  we  should  find  that  our  boasted  system 
of  social  distribution  was  no  more  successful  than  the  mus- 
ter of  one  regiment,  where  we  should  find,  on  the  one  hand, 
order  and  competence ;  on  the  other,  rags  and  tatters,  wives 
abandoned,  parents  neglected,  children  left  to  the  hazard 
of  casual  charity,  and  too  often  a  dark  shadow  of  vice  and 
wretchedness  following  in  the  train  of  our  vaunted  institu- 
tions. But  there  is  another  special  fallacy  involved  in  the 
objections  to  peasant  properties.  We  are  told  to  compare 
ourselves  with  those  countries  where  the  great  majority 
of  the  people  are  engaged  in  agriculture,  and  to  mark  their 
condition.  We  are  told,  with  a  singularly  lame  species  of 
reasoning,  that  France  is  a  nation  of  peasants ;  that  France 
has  peasant  proj)erties;  and,  consequently,  that  if  we  have 
peasant  properties,  we  shall  become  a  nation  of  peasants 
also.    But,  in  the  first  jilace,  the  question  is  not  whether 


166  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

France  may  have  run  rather  far  in  one  direction,  but 
whether  we  have  not  run  incomparably  further  in  the 
other;  and,  in  the  second  place,  France  has  at  present  no 
other  means  of  employing  her  population  except  on  the 
soil,  whereas  we  can  employ  a  hitherto  unknown  proportion 
of  our  people  in  manufacturing  and  commercial  industry. 
No  disposition  of  the  land  could  ever  again  reduce  Britain 
to  the  condition  of  France,  because  we  have  profitable 
manufactures,  holding  out  the  prospect  of  a  higher  reward 
than  can  be  derived  from  agriculture ;  and  consequently  it 
is  as  absurd  to  suppose  that  our  people  should  again  return 
to  mere  tillage,  as  that  they  should  return  to  the  hunting 
and  savage  state  of  the  earlier  ages.  The  question  of 
peasant  properties  does  not  aflfect  the  majority  of  our 
population,  but  only  that  portion  actually  engaged  in  the 
culture  of  the  soil ;  and  here  we  believe  that  the  allocation 
of  a  certain  portion  of  land  to  our  laboring  agriculturists 
would  go  a  great  way  to  restore  the  stability  and  inde- 
pendence of  our  country  population,  and  perhaps  to  revive 
those  homely  virtues  which  were  once  more  common  than 
they  are  now,  and  which  have  waned  exceedingly  within 
the  memory  of  those  who  are  still  alive.  Of  the  positive 
advantages  of  having  a  peasantry  rooted  and  grounded  in 
the  soil  itself  we  say  nothing,  because  there  are  at  present 
no  means  by  which  the  change  from  the  prevailing  system 
could  be  eflfected ;  but  it  seems  evident  that  if  our  colonies 
and  the  States  continue  to  present  advantages  which  can- 
not be  obtained  at  home,  and  if  our  people  come  to  regard 
emigration,  not  as  a  matter  of  necessity,  —  not  as  a  change 
which  the  indigent  are  obliged  to  make  for  the  sake  of  the 
necessaries  of  life, — but  as  an  attractive  removal  to  another 
sphere,  in  which  they  can  employ  their  labor  much  more 
satisfactorily  than  in  their  native  country,  then  we  must 
anticipate  that  a  larger  and  larger  portion  of  our  best 
laborers  will  seek  to  establish  an  independent  existence 
elsewhere,  and  leave  to  Britain  only  the  inferior  remnants 
of  a  class  that  has  fought  her  battles,  cultivated  her  fields, 


PEASANT  PROPERTIES.  167 

manned  her  ships,  worked  in  her  manufactories,  peopled  her 
colonies,  and  brought  her,  ungrateful  as  she  is,  up  to  the 
highest  pitch  of  power.  To  those  patriotic  gentlemen  who 
are  about  to  improve  the  dwellings  of  our  rural  population 
we  particularly  recommend  the  experiment  of  attaching  at 
least  to  some  of  the  cottages  as  much  land  as  would  keep 
a  cow,  with  a  rood  or  two  of  croft,  that  would  enable  the 
cottar  to  instruct  his  children  in  spade  husbandry,  and  to 
teach  them  regular  and  constant  habits  of  industry  from 
their  earliest  years.  Let  those  gentlemen  read  in  the 
"  Quarterly  Review  "  for  July,  1829,  how  Thomas  Rook  did 
his  hired  work  regularly,  and  yet  made  thirty  pounds  a 
year  out  of  a  little  bit  of  land ;  and  how  Richard  Thomson 
kept  two  pigs  and  a  Scotch  cow  on  an  acre  and  a  quarter 
—  worth,  when  he  got  it,  five  shillings  per  acre  of  rent ;  and 
how  the  widow  at  Hasketon  brought  up  her  fourteen  chil- 
dren, and  saved  them  from  the  degradation  of  the  parish, 
by  being  allowed  to  retain  as  much  land  as  kept  her  two 
cows;  and,  above  all,  let  them  remark  how  poor-rates  and 
degradation  have  always  followed  the  severance  of  the 
peasantry  from  the  soil.  If  they  wish  to  improve  the  peo- 
ple as  well  as  the  dwellings,  let  them  lay  these  things  to 
heart,  and  let  them  be  assured  that  the  fii'st  thing  to 
improve  the  laboring  man  is  to  hold  out  to  him  the  pros- 
pect of  an  independent  position,  which  he  may  hope  to 
attain  by  prudence,  economy,  and  honest  labor. 


168  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 


III. 

THE  FRANCHISE. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  sayings  of  which  the  discus- 
sion in  Parliament  on  the  Reform  Bill  proved  the  occasion, 
was  that  of  Loi'd  Jeffrey,  then  Lord  Advocate  for  Scot- 
land. "  It  was  a  measure,"  he  said,  "  that  would  separate 
the  waters  above  the  firmament  from  the  waters  below." 
The  remark  embodied  both  a  striking  figure  and  a  solid 
truth,  —  a  figure  which,  by  appealing  to  the  imagination, 
bas  sunk  deeper  into  the  memory  of  the  country  than  any 
other  produced  at  the  time;  and  a  truth  which  recent 
events  have  served  peculiarly  to  substantiate  and  elucidate. 
It  was  in  consequence  of  this  separation  of  the  waters, 
that,  while  the  revolutionary  hurricane  raged  wide  upon 
the  Continent,  dashing  into  one  wild,  weltering  ocean  of 
anarchy  and  confusion  the  dense  and  ponderous  masses, 
whose  inherent  strength  no  such  measure  had  divided  into 
antagonistic,  self-balancing  forces,  Britain  escaped  at  least 
all  the  more  terrible  consequences  of  the  storm.  It  is 
doubtful,  however,  whether  we  are  permanently  to  escape. 
We  are  told  by  men  of  science,  that,  save  for  the  continu- 
ous belt  of  ocean  which  girdles  the  globe  in  the  southern 
hemisphere,  we  of  the  northern  regions  would  have  scarce 
any  tides.  In  the  equatorial  and  arctic  oceans,  the  rise  of 
the  sea,  in  obedience  to  the  attractive  impulsions  of  the 
sun  and  moon,  is  checked  by  the  great  continents  that 
etretch  from  north  to  south  before  the  tidal  wave  becomes 
in  the  least  considerable ;  but  in  the  southern  belt  that 
wave  rolls  round  the  world  without  break  or  interruption, 
and  then,  travelling  northwards  laterally,  in  obedience  to 
the  law  through  which  water  always  seeks  its  level,  it 


THE  FRANCHISE.  16f» 

rises  and  falls  twice  every  twenty-four  hours  on  the  most 
northern  shores  of  Europe,  Asia,  and  America.  It  has 
been  thus  with  the  tidal  wave  of  revolution.  The  Reform 
Bill  in  this  country  stretched  abreast  of  the  privileged 
classes  like  a  vast  continent,  and  would  have  effectually 
checked  every  rising  tide  of  revolution  that  originated  in 
the  country  itself  But  there  lay  in  the  neighboring  States 
great  unbroken  belts  of  the  popular  ocean,  in  which  the 
revolutionary  wave  has  risen  high.  The  popular  privileges 
have  been  elevated,  in  consequence,  in  these  States,  con- 
siderably above  the  British  level ;  and  it  is  very  question- 
able whether  this  country  will  be  long  able  to  preserve  its 
lower  surface-line  unaltered,  when  the  flood  is  toppling  at 
a  higher  line  all  around  it.  It  would  be  at  least  well  to 
be  prepared  for  a  steady  setting  in  of  the  flood-tide  on  our 
shores;  it  would  be  wise  —  to  return  to  the  figure  of  Lord 
Jeffrey  —  to  be  casting  about  for  some  second  firmament, 
through  which  a  further  modicum*  of  bulk  and  volume 
might  bo  subtracted  from  the  wallers  below,  and  added  to 
the  waters  above. 

But  does  there  exist,  we  ask,  a  portion  of  these  lower 
waters  that  might  be  so  separated  with  safety?  We 
think  there  does.  The  bona  fide  property  qualification  we 
have  ever  regarded  as  peculiarly  valuable,  —  greatly  more 
so  than  the  mere  tenant  qualification.  The  man  who  in- 
habits as  tenant  a  house  for  which  he  pays  a  yearly  rental 
of  ten  pounds,  may  be  in  many  cases  a  man  as  well  hafted 
in  society,  and  possessed  of  as  considerable  a  stake  in  the 
stability  of  the  country  and  the  maintenance  of  its  institu- 
tions, as  the  proprietor  to  whom  the  ten  pounds  are  paid. 
But  the  class  are  by  no  means  so  safe  on  the  average. 
Their  stake,  as  a  body,  is  considerably  less ;  they  are  a 
gi'eatly  more  fluctuating  portion  of  the  population,  and 
more  unsteady  and  unbalanced  in  their  views  and  opinions. 
There  is  really  no  comparison  between  the  man  who,  in 
some  of  the  close  alleys  of  a  city  like  Edinburgh,  opens  a 
Bpirit-cellar  on  speculation  for  which  he  pays  a  yearly  rent 
15 


170  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

of  ten  pounds,  and  the  man  who,  after  steadily  adding 
pound  to  pound  during  the  course  of  half  a  lifetime,  at 
length  invests  his  little  capital  in  a  house  that  brings  him 
in  ten  pounds  per  annum,  or,  if  he  be  his  own  tenant,  that 
saves  him  that  sum.  The  ten-pound  tenants  and  the  ten- 
pound  pi-oprietore  compose,  in  tlie  aggregate,  bodies  of 
men  of  an  essentially  different  status  and  standing ;  and 
we  hold  that  along  the  scale  of  proprietorship  the  franchise 
might  safely  descend  a  very  considerable  way  indeed  ere  it 
corresponded  with  the  existing  level,  if  we  may  so  express 
ourselves,  on  the  tenant  scale.  We  hold  that  the  propri- 
etor who  possessed  a  house  valued  at  Jive  yearly  pounds, 
would  be  on  a  higher,  not  a  lower  level,  than  the  tenant 
who  merely  occvpieda  house  valued  at  te7i  yearly  pounds. 
His  stake  in  the  stability  of  the  national  institutions  would 
be  gi'eater;  and  it  might  be  rationally  premised  regarding 
him,  if  the  house  had  been  purchased  out  of  his  savings,  or 
if,  being  derived  to  him  by  inheritance,  he  continued  to 
preserve  it  unsquandered,  that  he  was  a  steadier  antl  safer 
man  than  the  mere  ten-pound  tenant,  of  whom  it  could 
only  be  premised  that  present  circumstances  had  enabled 
him,  or  hopes  of  future  advantage  had  induced  him,  to  in- 
habit a  dwelling  of  a  certain  value.  Nay,  we  are  by  no 
means  sure  whether  there  be  not  a  principle  in  human 
nature  through  which  a  descent  along  the  scale  of  propri- 
etorship, very  considerably  beneath  the  five  yearly  pounds, 
might  be  rendered  safe.  We  have  ever  found  men  valu- 
ing the  property  which  they  possessed,  especially  if  of 
their  own  earning,  not  by  an  absolute,  but  by  a  compara- 
tive standard, —  not  by  its  price  in  pounds  sterling,  but 
irith  reference  to  their  own  circumstances  and  condition, 
and  to  the  efforts  which  the  acquirement  of  it  had  cost 
them.  We  have  seen  working  men  quite  as  proud  of  the 
little  house,  consisting  of  a  but  and  a  ben,  a  trap-stair  and 
a  loft,  which  the  painful  labor  of  years  had  secured  to 
them,  as  the  merchant  on  the  little  estate  of  some  three  or 
four  hundred  acres,  in  which  he  had  invested  the  savings 


THE  FRANCHISE.  171 

of  a  lifetime,  or  the  master-builder  or  contractor  of  the 
half  street  or  square  of  which  his  profession,  long  and  suc- 
cessfully pursued,  had  enabled  him  to  become  the  ownei\ 
We  therefore  do  not  attempt  fixing  the  line  to  which,  in 
this  special  direction,  the  franchise  might  be  safely  permit- 
ted to  descend  ;  but  we  do  think  it  is  a  direction  in  which 
it  might  descend  very  safely  ;  and  though  in  our  larger 
cities,  such  as  Edinburgh  and  Glasgow,  its  descent  would 
have  scarce  any  effect  in  extending  that  basis  on  which 
the  representation  of  the  country  rests,  and  which  to  a  cer- 
tainty must  by  and  by  be  widened  and  enlarged,  we  arc 
mistaken  if  in  the  smaller  towns  it  would  not  considerably 
more  than  double  its  area.  It  would  broaden  the  base  of 
the  social  pyramid,  and  enable  it  to  resist,  without  the 
danger  of  overthrow,  the  coming  tempest  which  is  so  visi- 
bly darkening  the  heavens. 

Is  there  any  other  portion  of  the  "  waters  beneath  the 
firmament"  that  might  be  separated  from  the  general  mass 
and  made  to  balance  against  it,  somewhat  in  the  manner 
in  which  the  tidal  wave  that  enters  through  the  Bristol 
Channel  from  the  south  balances  and  counteracts  the  tidal 
wave  which  enters  the  German  Sea  from  the  north,  and 
in  some  parts  of  the  coast,  as  at  Great  Yarmouth  and  the 
Hague,  reduces,  by  fully  one  half,  the  average  rise  and  fall 
of  the  tide?  We  would  answer  this  query  much  more 
hesitatingly  and  doubtfully  than  the  other.  We,  however, 
do  not  see  on  what  principle  it  is  that,  while  the  tenants 
of  houses  of  ten-pound-rental  in  the  burghs  are  equally 
vested  in  the  franchise  with  their  proprietors,  it  is  merely 
the  proprietors  of  such  houses  that  are  vested  in  the  fran- 
chise in  the  counties.  Why  not  extend  the  privilege  to 
the  tenants  also  ?  The  writer  of  this  article  inhabits  a 
house  a  few  hundred  yards  beyond  the  boundary  line  of 
the  city,  as  drawn  at  the  time  of  the  Reform  Bill,  for  which 
he  pays  a  rent  of  rather  more  than  thirty  pounds  yearly; 
and  there  are  some  of  his  neighbors,  most  respectable,  in- 
telligent men,  who  inhabit  houses  for  which  they  pay  rent 


172  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

of  forty  and  forty-five  pounds ;  but  falling  short  of  a  fifty- 
jjound  rental,  they  do  not  possess  a  county  vote.  Why, 
we  ask,  should  this  state  of  things  exist  ?  As  the  tenants 
of  thirty  and  forty-pound  houses,  they  belong  to  an  entirely 
different  class  of  persons  from  the  tenants  of  thirty  and 
forty-pound  farms;  and  the  fact  of  actual  residency  in  their 
dwellings  places  them  in  a  category  still  more  widely  dif- 
ferent from  that  to  which  the  fictitious  voters  of  our  coun- 
ties belong.  We  are  disposed  to  hold  that  the  exclusion 
of  this  class  from  the  franchise  is  simply  the  consequence 
of  a  design  to  prevent  the  introduction,  not  of  an  element 
of  subserviency,  but  of  an  element  of  independence,  into 
our  county  elections,  and  that  in  this  direction  the  fran- 
chise might  be  safely  extended.  It  is  a  direction,  however, 
in  which  extension  could  not  very  considerably  affect  the 
representative  basis.  With  regard  to  further  extension 
along  the  tenant  line,  our  views  are  far  from  clear.  It 
seems  obvious,  however,  that  a  scale  of  rental  common  in 
its  pecuniary  amount  to  our  cities  and  our  smaller  towns 
does  not  adequately  represent  classes.  The  ten-pound 
house-renters  of  the  lesser  towns  are  considerably  superior 
in  the  average  to  the  ten-pound  house-renters  of  the  larger; 
nay,  it  seems  doubtful  whether  the  five  or  six-pound 
tenants  of  burghs  containing  from  fifteen  hundred  to  three 
thousand  inhabitants  do  not  stand,  on  the  average,  on  as 
high  a  level  as  the  ten-pound  tenants  of  the  towns  that 
possess  a  population  of  from  eighty  to  a  hundred  thousand. 
The  extension  of  the  franchise  to  the  five-pound  house- 
holders of  Edinburgh  and  Glasgow  would  in  all  probability 
wholly  swamp  the  existing  constituencies  of  these  towns, 
and  give  them  for  their  representatives  mere  loquacious 
Chartists,  full  of  words,  but  infirm  of  judgment  and  devoid 
of  principle  ;  but  we  would  have  no  such  fear  regarding  a 
similar  extension  in  burghs  such  as  Tain  and  Dingwall, 
Cromarty  and  Nairn. 

Our  dread  of  universal,  or  even  mere  household  suffrage, 
is  derived  clu.;fly  from  our  long  and  intimate  acquaintance 


THE  FRANCHISE.  178 

with  the  c'asses  into  whose  hands  it  would  throw  the  po- 
'itical  power  of  the  country.  "  A  poor  man  that  oppress- 
ith  the  poor,"  says  Solomon,  "  is  like  a  sweeping  rain 
which  leaveth  no  food."  Alas  !  tyranny,  as  the  wise  man 
well  knew,  is  not  the  exclusive  characteristic  of  the  wealthy 
and  the  powerful,  nor  is  oppression  the  offence  of  a  mere 
class.  It  is  not  the  aristocracy,  and  they  only,  that  are 
cruel  and  unjust  :  the  poor  can  also  override  the  natural 
liberties  of  the  poor,  and  trample  upon  their  rights ;  and 
it  is  according  to  our  experience  that  there  is  more  of  this 
injustice  and  tyranny  among  that  movement  class  now 
known  as  Chartists,  but  which  we  have  closely  studied 
under  other  names,  when  coming  in  contact  with  them  in 
strikes,  combinations,  and  political  meetings,  than  in  per- 
haps any  other  class  in  the  country.  It  has  been  at  least 
our  own  fate  in  life  never  personally  to  experience  the 
oppression  of  the  higher  ranks,  but  not  a  little  of  the  tyr- 
anny of  the  lower  classes,  especially  that  of  this  movement 
class.  And  we  derive  much  of  our  confidence  in  the 
property  qualification,  not  merely  from  the  sort  of  ballast 
in  the  state  which  it  furnishes,  but  from  the  fact  that  we 
never  yet  saw  a  workman  who  made  a  right  use  of  his 
wages  with  an  eye  to  his  advancement  in  life,  or  who  was 
in  any  respect  a  rising  man,  at  all  disposed  to  join  in  op- 
pressing a  comrade  or  neighbor.  We  have  very  frequently 
seen  him  made  a  victim  of  a  tyrannical  combination, — 
unmanly  odds  taken  against  him  if  at  all  formidable  for 
native  power,  —  but  rarely,  if  ever,  enacting  the  part  of  a 
tyrant  himself.  In  a  little  work  recently  published,  entitled 
the  "Autobiography  of  a  Working  Man,"  we  find  an  expe- 
rience of  this  kind  so  truthfully  rendered  that  we  cannot 
resist  submitting  it  to  the  reader.  The  working  man's 
story  is  illustrative  of  a  class  of  cases  incalculably  numer- 
ous, from  the  existence  of  which,  too  often  and  surely 
tested,  we  dei-ive  our  chief  dread  of  universal,  or  even 
houshold  suffrage,  and  the  abandonment  of  a  property 
qualification.  It  was  in  the  year  1830,  when  the  cry  for 
15* 


174  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

political  reform  in  this  country  was  so  loud  and  general, 
that  the  following  incident  in  the  history  of  the  working 
man  took  place :  — 

"  A  number  of  masons  were  hewing  the  blocks  of  stone,  and  each 
hewer  had  a  laborer  allotted  to  him  to  do  the  rougher  work  upon 
the  stone  with  a  short  pick  —  technically,  to  ♦  scutch '  it.  The  ma- 
sons were  intolerable  tyrants  to  their  laborers.  1  was  in  the  quarry 
cutting  the  blocks  from  the  rock  when  the  tide  was  out ;  and  when 
the  tide  was  in  I  went  and  scutched  with  some  of  the  hewers  — 
chiefly  with  my  friend  Alick.  One  day,  when  we  had  been  reading 
in  the  newspapers  a  great  deal  about  the  tyranny  of  the  Tories,  and 
the  tyranny  of  the  aristocracy  in  general,  and  some  of  the  hewers 
had  been,  as  usual,  wordy  and  loud  in  denouncing  all  tyrants,  and 
exclaiming,  '  Down  with  them  for  ever ! '  one  of  them  took  up  a 
long  wooden  straight-edge,  and  struck  a  laborer  with  the  sharp  edge 
of  it  over  the  shoulders.  Throwing  down  my  pick,  I  turned  round 
and  told  him  that,  so  long  as  I  was  about  the  works,  I  would  not  see 
a  laborer  struck  in  that  manner,  without  questioning  the  masons* 
pretended  right  to  domineer  over  laborers.  '  You  exclaim  against 
tyranny,'  I  continued,  '  and  you  yourselves  are  tyrants,  if  anybody 
is.'  The  hewer  answered  that  I  had  no  business  to  interfere  ;  that 
he  had  not  struck  me.  '  No,'  said  I,  '  or  you  would  have  been  in 
the  sea  by  this  time.  But  I  have  seen  laborers  who  dared  not  speak 
for  tliemselves  knocked  about  by  you,  and  by  many  others ;  and  by 
every  mason  about  these  works  I  have  seen  laborers  ordered  to  do 
things,  and  compelled  to  do  them,  which  no  working  man  should 
order  another  to  do,  far  less  have  the  power  to  compel  him  to  do. 
And  I  tell  you  It  shall  not  be  done.' 

"  The  laborers  gathered  around  me;  the  masons  conferred  together. 
One  of  them  said,  speaking  for  the  rest,  that  he  must  put  a  stop  to 
this  :  the  privileges  of  masons  were  not  to  be  questioned  by  laborers ; 
and  I  must  either  submit  to  that  reproof  or  punishment  which  they 
thought  fit  to  inflict,  or  leave  the  works ;  if  not,  theij  must  all  leave 
the  works.  The  punishment  hinted  at,  was,  to  submit  to  be  held  over 
one  of  the  blocks  of  stone,  face  downward,  the  feet  held  down  on 
one  side,  the  head  and  arms  held  down  on  the  other  side,  while  the 
mason  apprentices  would  whack  the  ofiender  with  their  leathern 
aprons  knotted  hard.  I  said  that,  so  far  from  submitting  to  reproof 
or  punishment,  I  would  carry  my  opposition  a  great  deal  further  than 
I  had  done.     They  had  all  talked  about  parliamentary  reform :  wa 


THE   FRANCHISE.  175 

had  all  joined  in  the  cry  for  reform,  and  denounced  the  exclusive 
privileges  of  the  anti-reformers ;  but  I  would  begin  reform  where  we 
then  stood.  I  would  demand,  and  I  then  demanded,  that  if  a  hewer 
wanted  his  stone  turned  over,  and  called  laborers  together  to  do  it, 
they  should  not  put  hands  to  it  unless  he  assisted  ;  that  if  a  hewer 
struck  a  laborer  at  his  work,  none  of  the  laborers  should  do  anything 
thereafter,  of  any  nature  whatever,  for  that  hewer.  The  masons 
laughed.  '  And  further,'  said  I,  '  the  masons  shall  not  be  entitled 
to  the  choice  of  any  room  they  choose,  if  we  go  into  a  public  house 
to  be  paid,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  laborers ;  nor,  if  there  be  only 
one  room  in  the  house,  shall  the  laborers  be  sent  outside  the  door,  tu 
give  the  room  to  the  masons,  as  has  been  the  case.  In  everything 
we  shall  be  your  equals,  except  in  wages  ;  that  we  have  no  right  to 
expect.'  The  masons,  on  hearing  these  conditions,  set  up  a  shout  o( 
derisive  laughter.  It  was  against  the  laws  of  their  body  to  hear  theli 
privileges  discussed  by  a  laborer ;  they  could  not  suffer  it,  they  said, 
and  I  must  instantly  submit  to  punishment  for  my  contumacy.  1 
told  them  that  I  was  a  quarryman,  and  not  a  mason's  laborer ;  that, 
as  such,  they  had  no  power  over  me.  They  scouted  this  plea,  and 
said  that  wherever  masons  were  at  work  they  were  superior,  and 
their  privileges  were  not  to  be  questioned.  I  asked  if  the  act  of  a 
mason  striking  a  laborer  with  a  rule  was  not  to  be  questioned.  They 
said,  by  their  own  body  it  might,  upon  a  complaint  from  the  laborer ; 
but  in  this  case  the  laborer  was  insolent  to  the  mason,  and  the  latter 
bad  a  right  to  strike  him.  They  demanded  that  I  should  at  once 
cease  to  argue  the  question,  and  submit,  before  it  was  too  late,  to 
whatever  punishment  they  chose  to  inflict.  Upon  hearing  this,  1 
put  myself  in  a  defensive  attitude,  and  said, '  Let  me  see  who  shall 
first  lay  hands  on  me ' !  No  one  approaching,  I  continued,  '  We  have 
been  reading  in  the  newspaper  discussions  about  reform,  and  have 
been  told  how  much  is  to  be  gained  by  even  one  person  sometimes 
making  a  resolute  stand  against  oppressive  power.  We  have  only 
this  day  seen  in  the  papers  a  warning  to  the  aristocracy  and  the 
anti-reformers  that  another  John  Hampden  may  arise.  Come  on, 
he  who  dares  !    I  shall  be  Hampden  to  the  tyrannies  of  masons ! ' 

"  None  of  them  offered  to  lay  hands  on  me  ;  one  said  they  had 
better  let  the  affair  rest  where  it  was,  as  there  would  only  be  a  fight 
about  it,  and  several  others  assented ;  and  so  we  resumed  our  work. 

"  Had  it  been  in  summer,  when  building  was  going  on,  they  would 
have  either  dismissed  me  from  the  works,  or  have  struck,  and  refused 
to  work  themselves.  It  was  only  about  the  end  of  January,  and 
they  could  not  afford  to  do  more  than  threaten  me." 


176  POLITICAL  AND  SOCIAL. 


IV. 

A  FIVM-PO  UKD  Q  UALWIGA  TION. 

When,  owing  to  some  deep-seated  cause,  the  general 
level  of  a  country  is  heightened  by  sudden  upheaval,  not 
only  is  its  area  extended  by  an  apparent  recession  of  the 
sea,  but  the  outlines  of  its  coasts  are  also  very  much 
changed.  In  places  where  the  land  is  flat  and  low,  and 
the  water  shallow,  it  receives  accessions  of  great  tracts  of 
new  country ;  whereas  in  other  places,  where  high  table- 
lands sink  suddenly  into  the  sea,  and  the  water  is  deep,  it 
is  i-estricted  to  nearly  its  old  limits.  In  Scotland,  for  in- 
stance, that  last  upheaval  which  laid  dry  the  old  coast-line 
added  many  a  rich  acre  to  the  links  of  the  Forth  and  the 
Carse  of  Gowrie,  and  gave  to  the  country  the  sites  of  most 
of  its  seaport  towns,  such  as  Leith  and  Greenock,  Mussel- 
burgh, Stonehaven,  and  Inverness  ;  whereas,  along  the 
rocky  shores  of  Aberdeen  and  Banff,  and  in  especial  Caith- 
ness and  Orkney,  it  did  little  more,  save  here  and  there  in 
a  narrow  inlet,  than  reduce  by  some  two  or  three  fathoms 
the  depth  of  se,i  at  the  foot  of  the  cliffs.  It  left  the  old 
boundaries  just  what  they  had  been.  The  extension  of 
area  which  took  place  in  consequence  of  the  upheaval  was 
partial  and  local,  though  in  the  aggregate  it  added  not  a 
little  to  the  general  value  of  the  country ;  and  this  peculiar 
character  was  altogether  a  result  of  the  previous  form  of 
tb-^  surface.  We  have  witnessed  something  similar  in  the 
effects  of  those  great  upheavals  which  occasionally  take 
place  in  the  political  world.  The  Reform  Bill  effected  a 
wonderful  upheaval  of  this  kind.  It  raised  over  the  sea- 
level,  in  certain  districts,  vast  tracts  that  had  been  pre- 
viously submerged ;  while  in  other  districts  it  left  the  old 


A  FIVE-POUND   QUALIFICATIOIT.  177 

limits  unchanged.  The  highlands  of  Toiyism  received  no 
new  accessions  ;  while  those  of  Liberalism  it  greatly  en- 
larged. By  elevating  the  long-buried  heads  of  the  people 
above  the  water  in  the  character  of  ten-pound  franchise- 
holders,  it  strengthened  the  trading  interests,  or  —  to  carry 
out  our  parallel  —  gave  new  standing-room  to  the  trading 
towns;  while  the  agricultural  interests,  located,  if  we  may 
so  speak,  on  the  high  table-lands  of  the  country,  remained 
no  broader  or  stronger  than  they  had  been  before.  And 
so,  in  the  great  struggle  which  ensued  between  the  two 
interests,  the  agricultural  one  went  down,  without,  however, 
catching  any  harm  in  the  fall,  and  free  trade  won  the  day. 
Party  in  general  was  not  a  little  affected  by  this  great 
upheaval.  The  new  accessions  were  chiefly  accessions 
made  to  the  cause  of  Liberalism  in  general ;  but  it  did 
quite  as  little  for  hereditary  Whiggism  as  for  hereditary 
Toryism ;  and  either  party  feel,  when  in  oflice,  that  it  has 
had  but  the  effect  of  making  their  position  more  precarious 
and  less  desirable  than  of  old.  Or  —  to  carry  out  to  a 
meet  termination  our  somewhat  lengthened  comparison  — 
"while  the  upheaval  has  done  much  for  those  lower  regions 
which  it  fairly  raised  over  water,  it  has  had  but  the  effect  of 
elevating  the  high  official  peaks  on  which  each  succeeding 
ministry  takes  its  stand,  into  a  less  genial  and  more  exposed 
region  of  the  atmosphex-e  than  that  which  they  had  previ- 
ously occupied.  It  has  thrown  them  up  nearer  than  of  old' 
to  the  chill  line  of  perpetual  ice  and  snow,  and  exposed 
them  to  the  dangers  of  treacherous  landslips  and  sudden 
avalanches. 

What,  let  us  ask,  would  be  the  effect  of  a  still  further 
upheaval  of  the  political  area,  that  would  place  the  ten- 
pound  franchise  in  the  position  of  a  second  old-coast-line, 
by  raising  a  widely-spread  five-pound  franchise  outside  of 
it?  To  what  regions  of  party  would  such  an  upheaval  add 
new  breadth  ?  In  what  regions  would  it  leave  the  present 
limits  unchanged  ?  What  would  be  its  effect,  for  instance, 
on  the  various  parties  in  Edinburgh,  as  brought  out  by  the 


178  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

late  election  ?  Some  of  these,  though  of  but  comparatively 
recent  appearance,  must  be  regarded  as  tolerably  permanent 
in  their  elements.  The  Forbes  Mackenzie  Act  is  a  law  of 
yesterday ;  but  the  strong  reaction  against  the  spirit  traffic 
has  been  going  on  for  some  considerable  time  ;  and  so  long 
as  the  monstrous  evil  of  intemperance  continues  to  exist 
it  will,  we  cannot  doubt,  continue  to  exist  also.  It  will 
continue  to  form  the  pervading  soul  and  spirit  of  a  distinct 
party;  nor  will  the  antagonist  party  —  the  public-house  one 
— be  less  permanent.  The  latter  has  in  its  composition 
that  strongest,  though  at  the  same  time  most  sordid,  of  all 
elements,  a  profit-and-loss  one:  it  stands  on  a  monetary 
basis,  —  a  foimdation  that  bids  fair  to  remain  firm  till  at 
least  the  millennium ;  and  so  both  these  parties,  come  of 
the  Forbes  Mackenzie  Act  what  may,  may  be  calculated 
on,  in  any  future  contest,  as  permanent  ones.  How  would 
an  extension  of  the  franchise  affect  them?  There  are  about 
nine  hundred  spirit-dealers  in  Edinburgh  ;  and  it  has  been 
calculated  that  in  the  late  election  about  three  hundred 
others  voted  in  the  spirit-dealing  interest,  influenced  by 
the  stake  which  they  possess  as  proprietors  of  public-house 
property.  A  public  house  or  tap-room  in  a  suitable  situa- 
tion lets  at  a  higher  rent,  by  from  one  third  to  one  half, 
than  it  would  bring  as  a  dwelling-house.  And  hence  the 
interest  of  the  proprietors  of  such,  in  their  standing  as 
public  houses,  and,  of  consequence,  their  opposition  to  any 
measure  that  would  have  the  effect  of  either  lessening  the 
number  of  spirit-dealers  or  reducing  their  profits.  Now, 
to  this  public-house  party  an  extension  of  the  franchise 
to  the  five-pound  householders  would  bring  almost  no  ac- 
cession of  strength.  All  the  spirit-dealers  pay  at  least 
ten-pound  rents ;  all  the  owners  of  their  houses  are  ten- 
pound  proprietors ;  both  classes  are  within  the  limits  of 
the  existing  franchise,  and  certainly,  as  a  body,  exhibit 
great  energy,  and  hold  well  and  act  efficiently  together. 
The  extension  of  the  franchise  would  do  almost  nothing 
for  them.   It  would  do  much,  however,  for  their  opponents. 


A  PrVE-POUND   QUALIPICATIQN.  17b 

The  strength  of  the  temperance  cause  will  be  found  to 
lie  chiefly  among  the  decent  five-pound  house-ienants, — 
skilled  mechanics  chiefly,  provident  enough  to  meet  the 
landlord  at  rent-day,  and  in  the  main  a  very  safe  class. 
The  men  at  present  outside  the  representative  pale,  who 
would  support  the  publicans  had  they  the  power,  are  a 
greatly  lower  class,  who,  though  in  some  instances  they 
may  pay  as  high  a  rent,  pay  it  by  the  month  or  the  week 
and  who  would  almost  always  lack  the  qualification  of 
being  settled  for  a  twelvemonth  in  the  same  dwelling 
Universal  suffi-age  might,  and  we  dare  say  would,  strengthen, 
the  publican  cause;  whereas  a  judiciously  limited  exten- 
sion of  the  suffrage  would  have  the  effect  of  virtually  weak- 
ening it,  by,  of  course,  leaving  it  just  what  it  is,  while  it 
greatly  strengthened  the  opposition  to  it. 

The  Roman  Catholic  party  in  Edinburgh  is  another 
comparatively  new  party.  We  remember  that  in  1824  — 
the  year  in  which  we  first  saw  the  Scottish  capital  —  the 
bakers  of  the  place  and  its  Irish  Papists  were  at  feud,  and 
that  the  bakers,  being  the  more  numerous  and  powerful 
party  of  the  two,  had  the  better.  Times  have  since  changed : 
the  Edinburgh  Irish  are  now  to  be  reckoned  by  thousands, 
—  from  fifteen  to  twenty  mayhap,  —  and  their  franchise- 
holders  amount  to  from  two  to  three  hundred.  And  yet 
an  extension  of  the  franchise  to  the  five-pound  level  would 
do  exceedingly  little  for  them.  They  consist  almost  ex- 
clusively of  two  classes,  —  a  broker  and  petty-dealer  class, 
whose  shops,  and  sometimes  their  dwelling-houses,  are  of 
value  enough  to  bring  them  within  the  limits  of  the  ten- 
pound  qualification  ;  and  a  class  of  unskilled  laborers,  who 
live  gregariously  in  humble  hovels,  to  which  a  five-pound 
qualification  would  not  nearly  descend,  and  who,  besides, 
shift  their  dwellings,  on  the  average,  some  four  or  five  times 
every  twelvemonth.  One  has  but  to  scan  for  a  few  minutes 
the  congregation  of  the  Roman  Catholic  chapel  in  Lothian 
Street,  as  the  motley  crowd  defiles  on  their  dismissal  towards 
the  Cowgate,  in  order  to  see  that  in  this  party,  as  in  the 


180  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

other,  it  is  from  universal  suffrage,  and  not  from  a  judi- 
cious!} restricted  extension  of  the  franchise,  that  there  is 
aught  to  be  feared.  The  qualification  would  require  to 
descend  very  low  indeed  ere  it  could  reach  the  class,  com- 
prising nine  tenths  of  the  whole  congregation,  who  wear 
their  weekday  clothes  on  Sunday  because  they  have  no 
other,  and  are  able,  at  the  utmost,  to  greet  the  day  with  a 
clean  shirt ;  and  as  for  the  few  respectably-dressed  men  in 
black  among  them, — that,  though  on  but  the  ordinary  level 
of  the  attendants  at  Protestant  places  of  worship,  catch  the 
eye  here  as  the  magnates  and  aristocrats  of  their  church, — 
they  are  all  voters  already.  As  opposed  to  the  Papists, 
however,  the  Protestant  party  would  gain  in  strength,  and 
that  very  considerably,  by  such  a  limited  extension  of 
the  franchise  as  the  one  we  specify.  At  least  not  more 
than  one  third  of  the  men  who  attend  anti-popish  lectures, 
and  whose  presence  at  Mr.  John  Hope's  meeting  made  it 
respectable  in  point  of  appearance  and  numbers,  at  present 
possess  the  franchise;  but  they  are  a  decent,  well-condi- 
tioned class,  and  the  houses  they  inhabit  do  not  fall,  save 
in  exceptional  cases,  beneath  a  five-pound  rental,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  average  very  considerably  above  it.  It  may 
be  safely  presumed  that  any  few  accessions  of  strength 
which  popery  might  receive  from  a  five-pound  extension 
of  the  franchise  would  be  balanced  at  least  ten  times  over 
by  the  assistance  which  Protestantism  would  draw  from 
the  accession  to  political  power  of  this  thoroughly  respect- 
able antagonist  class. 

There  are  two  other  parties  —  the  "Edinburgh  Review" 
Whigs  and  the  "  Blackwood  Magazine  "  Tories  —  whom 
the  extension  of  the  franchise  would  leave  exactly  as  they 
are,  unless,  indeed,  in  the  exercise  of  an  ingenuity  in  which 
they  excel  all  other  political  bodies,  they  should  fall  upon 
Bome  new  mode  of  manufacturing  fictitious  votes.  Of  these 
two  parties  the  Parliament  House  forms  the  central  nu- 
oleus,  and  each  in  turn,  as  their  friends  chance  to  be  in 
power  for  the  time,  possess  the  legal  patronage  of  Scotland, 


A   FIVE-POUND   QTJALmCATION.  181 

Judgeships,  sheriffships,  clerkships,  procurator-fiscalships, 
all  the  many  offices  which  Government  can  bestow,  and  to 
which  gentlemen  of  the  law  are  alone  eligible,  with  not  a 
few,  besides,  for  which  they  are  as  eligible  as  any  other 
class,  are  the  good  and  weighty  things  which,  like  a  great 
primary  planet  in  the  centre  of  a  system,  give  cohesion  and 
force  to  the  movements  of  these  parties.  We  make  the 
remark  in,  we  trust,  no  invidious  spirit.  Human  nature 
being  what  it  is,  these  things  must  and  will  have  their 
weight  and  influence.  There  have  been  many  instances 
of  wholly  disinterested  individuals  among  both  Whigs  and 
Tories;  but  there  never  yet  was  a  wholly  disinterested 
party ^  especially  when  in  power;  and  that  patronage  which 
made  Lord  Dundas  in  the  last  age  the  great  centre  round 
which  Scotch  politics  revolved,  renders  the  Parliament 
House  a  great  political  centre  now,  especially  in  Edinburgh. 
We  remember  seeing,  many  years  ago,  an  ingenious  cari- 
cature of  the  times  of  Fox  and  Pitt,  which  represented 
the  great  political  system  of  the  country  as  formed  on  the 
plan  of  the  solar  system.  The  Treasury,  with  its  massive 
bags  of  guineas,  formed  the  solar  centre,  and  the  various 
British  statesmen  of  the  age,  inscribed  within  circles  of 
bright  gambouge,  of  a  size  proportionate  to  their  influence, 
revolved  as  planets  around  it.  Some  of  the  larger  ones 
had  their  satellites.  Georgium  Sidus  (George  IH.)  pos- 
sessed as  his  moons  the  class  of  men  known  as  "the  friends 
of  the  King."  Pitt  also  had  his  numerous  satellites,  and 
so  had  Fox.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  complexity  in  the 
system,  — 

"  "With  centric  and  eccentric  scribbled  o'er, 
Cycle  and  epicycle,  orb  in  orb." 

But  the  great  centre  of  all  —  the  vast  attractive  mass 
towards  which  all  gi-avitated,  and  round  which  all  revolved 
—  was  the  Treasury,  with  its  bushels  of  golden  guineas. 
And  round  this  attractive  circle,  alike  bright  and  solid,  the 
great  statesmen  of  London  and  the  smaller  statesmen  of 
16 


182  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

Edinbui'gli  will  continue  to  revolve  in  these  as  certainly 
as  in  former  times ;  and  it  would  be  idle  to  dream  of  any 
other  condition  of  things  with  respect  to  the  old  governing 
parties,  whether  Whig  or  Tory.  But  not  the  less  is  it  a 
duty  on  the  part  of  men  who  love  their  country,  sedulously 
to  watch  over  an  influence  of  this  biasing  kind,  and  on 
proper  occasions  to  strive  hai'd  to  counteract  it.  And  by 
no  class  could  it  be  more  effectually  counteracted  than  by 
a  class  who  for  themselves  could  have  nothing  to  look  for 
or  expect.  And  such  a  class  the  five-pound  householders 
would  scarce  fail  to  approve  themselves.  A  scarlet  coat, 
associated  with  a  letter-carrier's  ofiice,  might  now  and  then 
be  found  for  a  compliant  working  man  who  voted  as  he 
was  bid ;  but  there  could  be  no  loaves  and  fishes  found 
for  so  great  a  multitude  as  that  of  the  five-pound  house- 
holders. 

Nor  would  we  deem  them  an  unsafe  class  in  the  main. 
They  would  be  found  to  comprise  the  great  bulk  of  the 
membership  of  all  the  evangelical  churches,  but  few  in- 
deed of  the  lapsed  classes.  Nay,  we  know  not  that  we 
could  draw  a  better  or  more  practical  line  of  demarcation 
between  these  lapsed  classes  and  our  useful  citizens  of  the 
humbler  class  than  that  which  a  five-pound  household 
qualification  would  furaish.  It  has  been  said  by  a  contem- 
porary, more  especially  by  its  correspondents,  that  our  aim 
in  supporting  Mr.  Brown  Douglas  in  the  recent  contest 
was  simply  to  aggrandize  the  Free  Church.  We  see  not, 
however,  how,  in  the  political  field,  the  Free  Church  could 
be  aggrandized.  We  certainly  look  for  no  endowments  for 
herself,  and  ask  neither  place  nor  emolument  for  her  min- 
isters or  members.  We  have  assuredly  no  wish  to  see  her 
revolving  round  the  Treasury  as  her  centre.  If  we  have 
desired  to  see  some  of  her  abler  men  returned  to  Parlia- 
ment, it  was  not  because  they  were  Free  Churchmen,  but 
because  we  knew  that  on  the  most  important  questions  of 
the  day  their  opinions  were  sound ;  and  if  we  now  desire 
to  see  many  of  her  members  possessed  of  the  franchise,  it 


THE    STRIKES.  183 

is  only  because  we  believe  they  would  exercise  it  safely 
and  well.  We  simply  throw  off,  on  the  present  occasion, 
a  few  suggestions,  not  as  definite  conclusions,  but  as  food 
for  thought,  —  as  contributions,  too,  towards  the  solution 
of  what  we  deem  an  interesting  problem.  The  show  of 
hands  at  the  hustings  of  last  week  was  greatly  in  favor  of 
Mr.  Brown  Douglas ;  and  when  led  to  inquire  how  best 
the  "  declaration  of  the  poll "  could  be  made  to  agree  with 
the  "show  of  hands,"  we  could  bethink  us  of  no  better  plan 
than  that  of  a  five-pound  qualification. 


V. 

THE  STRIKES. 

ARTICLE  I. 

The  last  twelvemonth  has  been  peculiarly  marked  in  the 
manufa-cturing  world  as  a  year  of  strikes  and  combinations  ; 
nor,  though  there  are  adjustments  taking  place,  and  bands 
of  operatives  returning  to  their  employment  after  months 
of  voluntary  idleness,  are  they  by  any  means  yet  at  an  end. 
Great  fires  and  disastrous  shipwrecks  are  both  very  terrible 
things  ;  but  so  far  as  the  mere  waste  of  property  is  involved, 
a  protracted  strike  is  at  least  as  formidable  as  either,  and 
its  permanent  effects  are  often  incalculably  more  mischiev- 
ous. Wreck  or  conflagration  never  yet  ruined  any  branch 
of  industry.  Wei-e  all  the  manufactured  goods  in  London 
to  be  destroyed  in  one  fell  blaze,  a  few  months  of  accele- 
rated industry  would  repair  the  loss.  The  greatest  calamity 
of  the  kind  which  could  possibly  take  place  would  resemble 
merely  the  emptying  of  a  reservoir  fed  by  a  perennial 
stream,  that  would  continue  flowing  till  it  had  filled  it 
again.   But  the  loss  occasioned  by  a  long-protracted  strike 


184  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

is  often  of  a  deeper  kind.  It  not  only  empties  the  res- 
ervoir, but  in  some  instances  cuts  off  the  spring,  and  in 
this  way  robs  of  its  means  of  supply  the  town  or  district 
whose  only  resource  the  spring  had  constituted.  Nations 
have  in  this  way,  when  there  were  competing  nations  in 
the  field,  been  permanently  stripped  of  lucrative  branches 
of  industry,  and  become  the  mere  importers  of  articles 
with  which  they  had  been  accustomed  to  supply  their 
neighbors.  In  other  instances  the  effects  are  disastrous, 
not  to  the  nation  generally,  but  to  merely  a  class  of  its 
workers.  A  partial  strike  of  one  section  of  workmen,  on 
the  product  of  whose  labors  certain  other  sections  are  de- 
pendent for  employment,  disturbs  the  social  machine,  and 
arrests  its  progress.  By  a  stoppage  in  the  movements  of 
a  single  wheel  or  pinion,  the  whole  engine  is  brought  to  a 
stand.  The  inventive  power  is  quickened,  through  the 
necessity  thus  created,  to  originate  some  mode  of  supplying 
the  place  of  the  refractory  bit  or  segment ;  the  ingenuity 
exerted  at  length  proves  successful  ;  wood,  iron,  and 
leather  are  made  to  perform  the  work  of  human  nerve  and 
muscle  ;  and  a  province  of  industry  is  divested  of  its  living 
workmen,  and  occupied  by  dead  machines.  We  believe 
one  of  the  last  instances  of  this  kind  furnished  by  the  his- 
tory of  strikes  took  place  in  the  flax  manufacture.  Simple 
as  the  work  of  the  heckler  may  seem,  it  was  long  found 
impossible  to  supersede  him  by  machinery.  In  drawing 
the  tangled  flax  through  the  bristling  hedge  of  steel  em- 
ployed in  disentangling  and  straightening  its  fibres,  the 
human  hand  had  a  nice  adaptability  to  the  ever-varying 
necessities  of  the  tuft  in  process  of  being  sorted,  which  for 
so  long  a  period  could  not  be  communicated  to  the  move- 
ments of  the  unconscious  machine,  that  the  mechanist  at 
length  fairly  gave  up  the  attempt,  and  sat  down  in  despair. 
A  series  of  strikes,  however,  on  the  part  of  the  hecklers, 
roused  him  anew  to  the  work.  Necessity  at  length  proved 
the  mother  of  invention.  After  repeated  failures,  he  ulti- 
mately succeeded  in  making  a  most  accomplished  heckler 
of  wood  and  metal,  who  never  strikes  work  so  long  as  he 


THE   STRIKES.  185 

gets  !i  few  shovelfuls  of  coal  to  consume  ;  and  the  flesh-and- 
blood  hecklers,  driven  out  of  the  field,  have  had  to  seek  in 
other  countries,  and  in  other  walks  of  exertion,  the  employ- 
ment which,  in  consequence  of  his  overmastering  competi- 
tion, they  can  no  longer  secure  in  their  own. 

Strikes  are  unquestionably  great  evils.  In  the  case  of  the 
liecklers,  what  they  effected  was,  not  the  ruin  of  the  flax 
trade  in  Scotland,  but  simply  the  ruin  of  the  class  of  me- 
chanics that  lived  by  the  heckle.  A  series  of  strikes  among 
the  sawyers  had  a  similar  result.  Circular  saws,  driven  by 
machinery,  entered  the  field  on  the  side  of  the  masters,  and 
the  recusant  sawyers  of  flesh  and  blood  went  to  the  wall 
in  the  competition  that  ensued.  But  in  both  cases  the 
trade  of  the  district  in  which  the  strikes  occurred  was  not 
permanently  injured.  Wood-and-metal  hecklei'S  and  saw- 
yers, with  the  strength  of  giants  in  their  iron  arms,  and 
that  fed  on  coke  and  charcoal,  took  the  place  of  the  greatly 
feebler  human  ones ;  and  that  was  just  all.  But  in  certain 
other  cases  the  result  has  been,  as  we  have  intimated,  more 
disastrous.  During  the  season  of  strikes  and  combinations 
that  followed  the  passing  of  the  Reform  Bill,  a  combination 
of  the  ship-carpenters  of  Dublin,  accompanied  by  more  than 
the  ordinary  Irish  violence  and  coercion,  was  completely 
successful.  The  terrified  masters  broke  down,  and,  yield- 
ing to  the  terms  imposed,  gave  their  workmen  the  wages 
they  demanded.  But  though  they  escaped  in  consequence 
the  bludgeon  and  the  brickbat,  they  could  not  escape  the 
ordinary  laws  of  trade  and  manufacture.  They  of  course 
looked  for  the  proper  return  from  the  capital  invested  in 
their  business  ;  they  expected  the  proper  remuneration  for 
the  time,  anxiety,  and  trouble  which  it  cost  them.  Profit 
was  as  indispensable  to  them  as  wages  to  their  operatives. 
They  found,  further,  that  on  the  new  terms,  and  with  the 
competition  of  the  western  coast  of  Britain,  especially  that 
of  the  ship-builders  of  Livei-pool  and  the  Clyde,  to  con- 
tend with,  profit  could  no  longer  be  realized,  and  so  they 
had  to  shut  up  their  workyards,  one  after  another;  and 
16* 


186  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

Dublin  has  now  scarce  any  trade  in  ship-building.  Its 
ship-carpenters  have  become  very  few,  and  of  consequence 
very  weak ;  and,  no  longer  able  to  dictate  terras  as  before, 
they  have  to  work  for  wages  quite  as  low  as  in  any  other 
part  of  the  United  Kingdom.  But  though  carpenter-work 
may  now  be  had  as  cheaply  in  the  Irish  capital  as  in  Liver- 
pool or  Glasgow,  the  trade,  fairly  scared  away,  failed  to 
return;  the  dock-masters  of  the  Clyde  and  the  Mersey 
kept  a  firm  hold  of  what  they  had  got ;  and  all  that  was 
accomplished  by  the  successful  strike  of  the  Dublin  ship- 
carpenters  was  simply  the  ruin  of  the  ship-carpentry  of 
Dublin.  Nor  would  the  result  have  been  different  had  the 
combination  been  raoi'e  extensive.  Had  it  included  all  the 
carpenters  of  Britain  and  Ireland,  the  competition  in  ship- 
building would  have  lain  between,  not  the  opposite  sides 
of  the  Irish  Channel,  but  the  opposite  sides  of  the  German 
Ocean  ;  our  merchants  would  have  purchased  their  vessels 
not  from  the  Clyde  and  the  Mersey,  but  from  the  dock- 
yards of  the  Baltic  and  the  Zuyder  Zee  ;  and  our  British 
carpenters,  instead  of  being,  as  of  old,  the  fabricators  of 
navies,  might  set  out,  shovel  in  hand,  for  the  railways,  and 
become  navvies  themselves.  Unless  the  originators  of  the 
strikes  of  the  country  were  also  the  makers  of  its  laws,  and 
could  reintroduce  the  protective  system,  very  successful 
strikes  could  have  but  the  effect  of  striking  down  the  trade 
of  the  empire,  and  prostrating  its  commerce. 

And  yet,  disastrous  as  strikes  almost  always  are,  it  can- 
not be  questioned  that  the  general  principle  which  they 
involve  is  a  just  one,  —  quite  as  just  as  that  of  the  masters 
who  continue  to  resist  them.  In  the  labor  market,  as  in 
every  other,  it  is  as  fair  to  sell  dear  as  to  buy  cheap ;  and 
it  is  in  no  degree  more  unjust  for  five  hundred,  five  thou- 
sand, or  fifty  thousand  men  to  agree  together  that  they 
shall  demand  a  high  price  for  their  labor,  than  it  is  for  five 
or  for  one.  The  laws  framed  to  compel  working  men  to 
labor  at  whatever  rate  of  remuneration  legislators  may 
choose  to  fix,  —  and  in  this  country  the  terms  legislators 


THE    STRIKES.  187 

and  employers  have  in  the  main  been  ever  synonymous,  — 
are  properly  regarded  as  evidences  of  a  barbarous  and  un- 
scrupulous time.  The  unquestioned  right  of  the  working 
man,  is,  however,  of  all  others  one  of  the  most  liable  to 
abuse.  It  is  greatly  more  so  than  the  corresponding  right 
of  his  employers.  Both  possess  the  same  common  nature; 
and  it  is  quite  as  much  the  desire  of  the  one  to  buy  labor 
cheaply  as  of  the  other  to  sell  it  dear.  But  there  is  an 
amount  of  responsibility  attached  to  the  position  of  the 
masters  which  has  always  the  effect,  in  at  least  a  free  age 
and  country,  of  keeping  their  combinations  within  compar- 
atively the  same  bounds.  Masters  of  a  morally  inferior 
cast  cannot  control  their  fellows.  Should  they  even  be  a 
majority,  and  should  they  agree  to  fix  a  rate  of  wages  dis- 
proportionately low  compared  with  their  own  profits,  a  few 
honest  employers,  instead  of  incurring  loss  by  entering  into 
competition  with  them,  and  raising  the  hire  of  their  work- 
men, would  soon  appropriate  to  themselves  their  gains  by 
robbing  them  at  once  of  their  workers  and  their  trade. 
Competition  on  the  side  of  the  masters  forms  always  the 
wholesome  corrective  of  combination.  Nor  dare  the  com- 
biners take  undue  means  to  overawe  and  control  the  com- 
petitors. Their  amount  of  pi'operty,  and  their  general 
standing  in  consequence,  give  them  a  stake  in  their  coun- 
try which  they  dare  not  forfeit  by  any  scheme  of  intimida- 
tion ;  a  regard,  too,  to  the  general  interests  of  their  trade, 
imposes  upon  them  its  limits ;  and  thus  supposing  them  to 
be  quite  as  unscrupulous  and  selfish  as  the  worst  workmen 
that  ever  lived,  as  no  doubt  some  of  them  are,  there  are 
in  the  nature  of  things  restrictions  set  upon  them  which 
the  workman,  often  to  his  disadvantage,  escapes.  On  him 
the  lowliness  of  circumstances  virtually  confers  a  power,  if 
he  has  but  the  hardihood  to  assert  it,  of  overawing  com- 
petition. And  we  find  from  the  history  of  all  strikes  that 
he  always  does  attempt  to  overawe  it.  During  the  last 
thirty  years  he  has  shot  at  it,  thrown  vitriol  upon  it,  rolled 
it  in  the  kennel,  sent  it  to  Coventry,  persecuted  it  with 


188  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

clumsy  but  very  relentless  ridicule,  and  subjected  it,  where 
he  could,  to  illegal  fines.  Masters  have  no  doubt  the  same 
nature  in  them  as  their  men  ;  but  from  their  position  they 
cannot,  or  dare  not,  attempt  putting  down  competition  in 
this  way.  Their  position  is  that  of  the  responsible  few, 
while  that  occupied  by  the  operative  classes  is  the  position 
of  the  comparatively  irresponsible  many;  and,  from  the 
little  stake  which  the  latter  possess  in  the  property  of  the 
country  individually,  and  fi"om  their  conscious  power  in  the 
mass,  they  are  ever  under  the  temptation  of  overstretching 
their  proper  liberties  of  combining,  to  carry  out  their  own 
intentions,  into  a  wild  license,  which  demands  that  their 
neighbors  and  fellows  shall  not,  either  singly  or  in  parties, 
exercise  the  liberty  of  carrying  out  theirs.  There  have  been 
several  glaring  instances  of  this  species  of  tyranny  during 
even  the  present  strikes.  But  one  instance  of  the  kind  may 
serve  as  a  specimen  of  the  class.  We  quote  from  the 
Stockport  correspondent  of  a  London  paper : — 

"  At  a  large  mill  not  three  miles  from  this,  where  upwards  of  a  thou- 
sand hands  are  engaged,  one  of  the  weavers  did  not  choose  to  subscribe 
to  the  weekly  delegate's  tax  towards  the  unfortunate  Preston  strike. 
In  consequence,  one  evening  this  week,  when  the  mill  stopped,  he  was 
watched  in  passing  through  the  large  gates  into  the  road,  was  imme- 
diately knocked  down  and  blindfolded,  his  arms  pinioned,  and  his 
legs  tied  fast  together,  and,  thus  disabled,  was  carried  through  the 
population  of  the  place,  mobbed  by  hundreds  upon  hundreds,  shout- 
ing, yelling,  and  execrating,  not  a  soul  daring  to  interfere,  as  any 
resistance  to  these  proceedings  would  probably  have  cost  the  poor 
fellow  his  life.  J  know  the  man  well,  as  an  honest,  sober,  hard- 
working operative,  and  feel  grieved  that  he  should  be  thus  persecuted. 

"  You  may  say,  Why  do  not  the  masters  protect  such  men,  and  put 
down  such  tyranny  ?  Simply  because  they  dare  not ;  such  interfer- 
ence being  sure  to  be  followed  by  a  general  turn-out,  and,  very  likely, 
by  destruction  of  property  by  fire  or  otherwise.  These  are  sad 
reaUties ;  and  I  cannot  but  conclude  that  the  above  outrage  has  been 
a  natural  sequence  to  the  visit  of  one  of  the  Preston  delegates  to  the 
heads  of  that  very  mill  during  last  week.  My  own  life  would  not  be 
safe,  were  it  known  that  I  had  told  this  circumstance  to  one  connected 
witli  what  the  delegates  call  the  '  vile  hireling  press.' " 


THE    STRIKES.  189 

It  is  one  of  the  grand  disadvantages  of  .these  strikes  that 
their  management  and  direction  are  almost  always  thrown 
into  the  hands  of  a  class  of  men  widely  different  in  character 
from  the  country's  more  solid  and  respectable  mechanics. 
We  had  to  record  in  one  brief  paragraph,  a  few  numbers 
since,  the  flight  of  two  delegates  of  the  Preston  movement, 
—  the  one  with  twenty-five  pounds  of  the  defence  fund 
in  his  possession,  the  other  with  one  hundred  and  sixty. 
And  such  are  too  generally  the  sort  of  men  that  force 
themselves  into  prominence  in  these  movements.  Inferior 
often  as  workmen,  low  in  the  moral  sense,  fluent  as  talkers, 
but  very  unwise  as  counsellors,  they  rarely  fail  to  land  in 
ruin  the  men  who,  smit  by  their  stump  oratory,  make  choice 
of  them  as  their  directors  and  guides.  Too  little  wise  to 
see  that  the  most  formidable  opponent  which  any  party 
can  arouse  is  the  moral  sense  of  a  community,  violence  and 
coercion  form  invariably  the  clumsy  expedients  of  their 
policy.  And  so,  for  the  success  which  a  well-timed  strike, 
founded  on  just  principles,  would  be  almost  always  certain 
to  secure,  they  succeed  in  but  achieving  from  their  un- 
fortunate constituencies  discomfiture,  either  immediate  or 
ultimate.  It  is  really  the  least  mischievous  of  these  strike- 
leaders  that,  like  the  Preston  delegates,  run  away  with  the 
funds.  We  find  in  strikes,  as  they  ordinarily  occur,  the 
disastrous  working  of  exactly  the  same  principle  which  has 
rendered  the  revolutions  of  the  Continent  such  unhappy 
abortions.  Who  can  doubt  that  the  revolutions,  like  some 
of  the  strikes,  had  their  basis  of  real  grievances  ?  But 
their  leaders  lacked  sense  and  virtue  ;  their  wild  license 
became  more  intolerable  than  the  torpid  despotism  which 
it  had  supplanted ;  and  in  the  reaction  that  ensued,  the 
sober  citizen,  the  quiet  mechanic,  the  industrious  tiller  of 
the  soil,  all  the  representatives  of  very  influential  classes, 
found  it  better,  on  the  whole,  again  to  submit  themselves 
to  the  old  tyranny  than  to  prostrate  themselves  before  the 
new. 


190  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 


AETICUE  II. 

OAPiTAii  and  labor  are  joint  values,  invested  together 
■for  the  production  of  a  common  result,  which  result  is  the 
selling  price  of  the  article  brought  into  the  market.  In  a 
commercial  point  of  view,  it  matters  little  what  the  ai-ticle 
may  be.  It  may  be  corn,  cattle,  or  agricultural  produce  ; 
it  may  be  raw  cotton,  cotton  yarn,  or  calico  ;  it  may  be 
iron-stone,  pig-iron,  bar-iron,  steel,  or  hardware  goods,  large 
or  small,  a  needle  or  an  anchor,  an  iron  spoon,  or  a  mag- 
nificent iron  ship  that  transpoils  thousands  of  men  in  ease 
and  comfort,  or  thousands  of  tons  of  goods  with  safety  and 
celerity  ;  it  may  be  a  picture,  a  statue,  a  piece  of  music,  a 
poem,  or  any  other  work  of  art ;  it  may  be  a  dwelling, 
varying  from  the  wretched  holes  in  which  modern  society 
stores  away  so  large  a  portion  of  the  working  population, 
bringing  them  up  in  an  atmosphere  of  physical  deteriora- 
tion and  moral  corruption,  to  the  lordly  dwelling  or  the 
royal  palace,  where  luxury  seems  almost  to  have  exhausted 
her  inventions,  and  left  no  wish  ungratified  or  unprovided 
for;  it  may  be  a  book  or  a  magazine,  a  quarterly  or  a 
newspaper ;  it  may  be,  in  fact,  anything  whatever  produced 
for  the  market  and  exposed  for  sale.  In  the  articles  there 
may  be  a  thousand  varieties ;  but  there  is  always  a  j:)erma- 
nent  object  which  is  common  to  them  all  —  the  selling 
price.  The  object  of  the  manufacturer —  and  every  pro- 
ducer may  be  termed  a  manufacturer  ;  the  farmer,  for 
instance,  is  as  much  a  manufacturer  of  grain,  of  horses, 
sheep,  and  cattle,  as  the  cotton-spinner  of  cotton  yarn,  or 
the  ship-builder  of  a  ship  —  is  not  merely  to  produce  a 
given  article,  but  to  produce  an  article  that  will  realize  a 
selling  price,  which  selling  price  ought  to  repay  the  cost  of 
production,  and  leave  a  pi'ofit  on  the  transaction.  This  is 
the  great  commercial  principle  which  pervades  the  ordinary 
world  of  industry.  True  there  are  exceptions,  because 
there  are  labors  expended  and  objects  produced  which 
have  an  end  and  puipose  differing  altogether  from  the 


THE    STRIKES.  191 

purposes  of  commerce.  The  end  of  commerce  is  gain,  — 
profit  to  those  who  are  engaged  in  it.  But  gain,  though 
absolutely  necessary  where  men  live  in  a  world  of  exchange 
and  competition,  may  have  a  higher  counterpart,  —  the 
gain,  not  of  ourselves,  but  of  others.  Hence  all  works  of 
charity,  benevolence,  and  moral  instruction  originate  in  a 
higher  principle  than  that  of  commercial  gain.  So  also  in 
the  region  of  literature,  which  abounds  with  what  the  mer- 
cantile world  would  term  unprofitable  speculations.  Books 
are  produced  from  many  various  motives,  entirely  sepa- 
rated from  the  commercial  principle.  Some  authors  produce 
books  from  a  desire  to  enlighten  their  fellow-men ;  some 
from  the  spontaneous  desire  to  give  utterance  to  the  native 
voice  of  genius  —  the  " Paradise  Lost,"  for  instance;  some 
from  a  love  of  fame ;  some  from  a  miscalculated  estimate 
of  their  powers.  In  almost  every  department  of  art  there 
are  artists  who  regard  excellence  as  higher  than  profit,  and 
"who  pursue  it  sometimes  to  their  own  loss;  just  as  there 
are  philosophers  who  pursue  their  inquiries  after  truth 
without  regard  to  the  accident  of  remuneration  ;  and  just 
as  there  are  inventors  who  perfect  machines  and  processes, 
with  minds  so  ardently  bent  on  the  realization  of  their 
special  idea  that  they  sacrifice  fame  and  fortune  to  an 
achievement  that  may  have  great  results,  or  no  results,  as 
the  chance  may  be,  yet  which  bring  to  themselves  no  ele- 
ment of  worldly  prosperity.  Thomas  Waghorn's  overland 
route  to  India,  and  Morgan's  paddle-wheel,  are  notable 
instances  of  skill  and  perseverance  which  brought  no  com- 
mercial reward ;  the  first  saving  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
pounds  annually  to  this  country,  and  leaving  Mr.  Waghorn's 
widow  on  a  pension  of  fifty  pounds  a  year ;  the  other  being 
a  most  beautiful  piece  of  mechanism,  which  cost  the  fortune 
of  the  inventor,  and  left  him,  we  believe,  in  a  commercial 
sense,  a  ruined  man. 

Accidental  exploits  of  this  kind,  however,  are  merely 
the  pioneerings  of  commerce,  —  the  voyages  of  discovery 
into  new  regions,  which  may  prove  Arctic  with  unprofitable 


192  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

snows,  or  Australian  with  untold  treasures  of  wool,  copper, 
and  gold.  In  commerce,  as  well  as  in  geography,  there 
are  invasions  of  a  hitherto  unknown  territory,  —  new 
speculations,  like,  new  expeditions,  opening  up  new  fields 
of  enterprise  and  industry.  Columbus  discovers  a  new 
world,  but  reaps  small  advantage  from  a  deed  that  is  un- 
surpassed in  the  annals  of  adventure.  On  the  other  hand, 
a  chemist,  experimenting  on  sugar,  finds  that  certain  sub- 
stances will  refine  it,  and  straightway  he  reaps  a  princely 
fortune  from  the  accidental  revelation.  In  commei'ce, 
however,  as  well  as  in  geography,  there  is  an  old  world  as 
well  as  a  new,  —  a  region  of  beaten  paths  and  customary 
ways,  as  well  as  a  region  of  emigration,  into  which  the  old 
world  pours  the  enterprising  or  the  unemployed  of  its  pop- 
ulation. In  commerce  there  is  an  every-day  old  world  of 
buying,  selling,  and  getting  gain,  —  of  manufacturing  for 
the  ordinary  necessities  of  the  race, —  of  producing  multi- 
tudes of  articles  which  are  the  joint  productions  of  capital 
and  labor.  In  this  manufacturing  world  there  are  two 
parties,  —  the  employers  and  the  employed.  The  first 
brings  his  money  or  his  money's  worth  —  his  land,  his 
houses,  his  materials,  his  credit,  and  his  power  of  waiting 
for  a  return.  The  latter  bring  their  skill  and  labor,  their 
knowledge,  their  practice,  —  in  short,  their  power  of 
doing  the  thing  that  is  requisite  to  produce  the  article. 
Capital  and  labor,  then,  are  joint  investments;  but  they 
are,  in  the  present  constitution  of  society,  antagonistic 
to  each  other.  Whether  a  plan  might  be  devised  by 
which  this  antagonism  should  be  obviated,  as  a  super- 
fluous and  unnecessary  encumbrance,  we  cannot  as  yet  say. 
Such  a  plan,  if  such  be  possible,  is  the  great  desideratum 
of  the  commercial  world  ;  and  we  have  at  least  the  satis- 
faction of  knowing  that  at  no  anterior  period  of  history 
has  it  been  sought  for  with  the  same  ardor  as  at  present, 
or  with  the  same  probability  of  a  successful  issue.  Leaving 
that  question  alone,  however,  we  need  not  hesitate  to 
affirm  that  at  present  capital  and  labor  are  commercially 


THE    STRIKES.  193 

antagonistic  when  employed  together  in  the  production  of 
the  same  work, — capital  perpetually  endeavoring  to  reduce 
the  price  of  labor,  and  labor  perpetually  endeavoring  to  en- 
hance its  own  market  value.  In  this  case  there  is  nothing 
unreasonable  or  improper.  No  doubt  there  are  evils  inci- 
dental to  the  system,  and  occasional  cases  where  the  prin- 
ple  is  pushed  to  an  extreme  which  is  morally  wicked  and 
fraudulent;  as,  for  instance,  where  capital  takes  advantage 
of  the  penury  of  the  laborer,  and  accords  him  only  a  starv- 
ation price ;  or  where  the  laborer  takes  advantage  of  some 
distressed  situation  into  which  the  capitalist  has  fallen,  — 
say  war,  shipwreck,  fire,  or  many  other  calamitous  conditions, 
—  and  refuses  to  give  his  labor  except  at  an  exorbitant 
rate,  such  as  ought  not  to  be  required  between  man  and 
man.  These  cases  are  the  abuses  of  the  system,  and  we 
pass  them  over.  But  so  long  as  competition  is  the  regu- 
lating principle  of  the  commercial  world,  capital  and  labor 
must  be  to  this  extent  antagonistic,  —  that  each  will  en- 
deavor to  obtain  as  large  a  share  as  possible  of  the  selling 
price  of  the  produced  article  ;  and  the  portion  whicli  the 
one  obtains  cannot  be  also  obtained  by  the  other.  The 
question,  then,  is  to  ascertain  the  proper  proportion  that 
should  be  allotted  to  capital,  and  the  proper  proportion  that 
should  be  allotted  to  labor,  when  they  are  jointly  employed. 
At  first  sight  this  may  appear  a  simple  question.  If  five 
pounds'  worth  of  labor  and  five  pounds  of  capital  are  em- 
barked in  a  dining-table  which  sells  for  fifteen  pounds,  we 
might  say  that  the  expenditure  had  been  equal,  and  that  the 
price  obtained  should  be  shared  equally.  This  may  seem  an 
easy  way  of  solving  the  difficulty ;  but  unfortunately  these 
easy  methods  of  solution  are  utterly  incapable  of  application. 
There  are  fluctuations  in  supply  and  demand  which  alter 
the  value  of  every  single  item ;  and  unless  we  could  make 
supply  and  demand  absolutely  constant,  we  could  never 
apply  a  rule  which  proceeded  on  the  distribution  of  the 
selling  price.  A  capitalist  may  conduct  his  business  for 
years,  paying  regularly  for  the  labor  he  employs,  and  yet 
17 


194  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

barely  clear  his  expenses,  when  suddenly  somft  accidental 
circumstance  causes  a  great  demand,  a  great  rise  in  price, 
and  he  is  fairly  entitled,  not  only  to  the  profits  of  the  pres- 
ent time,  but,  to  some  extent,  to  the  profits  of  past  unfruit- 
ful years,  and  this  not  because  the  present  should  pay  for 
the  past,  but  because  the  present  is  actually  a  portion  of 
the  past ;  that  is,  the  capitalist  calculates  on  an  average 
of  profits,  which  average  may  extend  over  a  very  consider- 
able period.  Recently  we  have  had  two  instances  of  this 
kind,  namely,  in  shipping  property  and  in  cattle-dealing. 
About  two  years  since  both  of  these  businesses  became 
highly  remunerative  ;  but  previously  they  had  been  carried 
on  almost  without  profit,  and  in  many  cases  with  loss. 
Those  engaged  in  them  were  fairly  entitled  to  a  certain 
amount  of  extra  profit,  because  they  had  submitted  to  a 
term  of  years  in  which  their  returns  were  far  below  the 
average,  and  they  required  to  recover  the  legitimate  value 
of  their  previously-expended  time  and  capital.  Another 
instance  we  may  cite,  as  showing  the  extent  of  fluctuation. 
During  the  Australian  gold  mania,  seamen,  hoping  to  reap 
some  of  the  advantages,  were  willing  to  ship  for  the  voy- 
age to  Australia,  for,  say  a  shilling  per  month  ;  whereas 
seamen  shipping /rom  Australia  (Melbourne)  obtained  ten, 
twenty,  and,  we  believe,  in  some  cases,  thirty  pounds  per 
month.  In  the  first  case  the  capitalist  made  a  large  profit 
out  of  the  laborer;  in  the  second  the  laborer  made  a  large 
profit  out  of  the  capitalist ;  but  in  neither  case  was  the 
absolute  return  —  the  selling  price — made  the  criterion. 
The  criterion  was  —  as  it  always  must  be  so  long  as  free 
competition  is  the  ruling  principle  —  the  relation  of  the 
demand  to  the  supply,  and  of  the  supply  to  the  demand. 
That  these  fluctuations  are  evils,  and  attended  with 
many  inconveniences,  there  can  be  little  doubt  ;  and  if 
any  specific  proof  were  required,  we  miglit  point  at  once 
to  the  fact  that  they  lead  to  those  most  unhappy  and  most 
unprofitable  exhibitions  called  strikes.  When  prices  rise, 
and  the  laborer  thinks  that  he  receives  less  than  his  due 


THE   STRIKES.  195 

proportion  of  the  returns,  he  strikes;  and  when  prices  fall, 
so  that  the  returns  will  not  cover  the  cost,  the  capitalist 
strikes,  —  that  is,  he  ceases  to  employ  labor;  and  in  so 
tloing  he  strikes  quite  as  much  as  the  laborer  does  when 
he  refuses  to  employ  capital.  In  fact,  the  whole  commer- 
cial world  is  always  in  a  modified  state  of  strike.  When 
prices  rise,  it  is  because  the  seller  has  struck  against  the 
buyer;  and  when  prices  fall,  it  is  because  the  buyer  has 
struck  against  the  seller.  A  few  infatuated  individuals 
will  attempt  to  resist  the  ordinary  law  of  supply  and  de- 
mand ;  and  hence  we  hear  of  some  English  farmers  who 
have  kept  their  wheat  in  stack  for  ten  years,  to  be  eaten 
up  by  I'ats  and  mice,  rather  than  sell  at  the  current  market 
value.  But  the  great  majority  must  always  succumb  to 
the  market,  and  take  the  current  rates,  whether  those  rates 
be  the  price  of  labor,  or  the  price  of  capital,  or  the  price 
of  produce.  In  general  it  is  the  capitalist  who  receives  the 
sale  price,  and  who  had  charge  of  the  money  ;  and  it  is 
this  circumstance,  perhaps  as  much  as  any  other,  that  cre- 
ates a  jealousy  in  the  mind  of  the  working  men  that  the 
capitalist  appropriates  more  than  his  just  share.  Let  us 
reverse  the  picture,  however,  and  look  at  the  other  side. 
The  banks  advance  money  to  parties  who  want  capital. 
These  parties  are,  in  tact,  the  laborers,  and  the  bank  is  the 
capitalist.  Now,  these  persons  often  engage  in  very  lu- 
crative transactions  with  the  bank  money ;  yet  the  bank 
never  seeks  to  share  in  the  unusual  profits.  The  bank  for 
its  money  asks  only  the  current  rate  of  interest,  regulated 
by  the  supply  of  cash  in  the  market  and  the  demand  tor  the 
same.  In  this  case,  it  is  not  the  capitalist,  but  the  laborer, 
who  receives  the  sale  price,  and  who  has  the  whole  and 
sole  charge  of  the  returns.  The  bank  is  not  jealous  that 
its  money  has  been  employed  to  advantage ;  on  the  con- 
trary, the  bankers  know  that  the  better  the  return,  the 
more  does  business  thrive,  and  the  more  demand  will  there 
be  f  )r  the  bank  money,  leading  to  a  higher  rate  of  interest 
and  to  the  prosperity  of  the  capitalist.     So  also  with  the 


196  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

workmen  who  laboi  for  the  capitalist.  Tliey  ought  to  re- 
joice that  the  capitalist  derives  large  returns,  because  those 
large  returns  afford  them  a  security  that  their  labor  will  be 
employed,  and  that  their  wages  will  be  as  high  as  the 
competition  in  their  particular  branch  of  business  will  pru- 
dently afford.  Strikes,  then,  for  a  rise  of  wages,  are  de- 
structive resorts  to  an  extreme  and  hazardous  remedy. 
Theoretically  they  are  wrong  and  unnecessary  in  a  free 
country,  where  everything  is  open  to  free  corapetiiion ; 
and  practically  they  have,  we  believe,  in  almost  every  case 
on  record,  shown  themselves  to  be  perfectly  useless.  They 
have  never  done  good  ;  and  though  we  no  more  deny  the 
right  of  men  to  strike  than  'we  deny  the  right  of  the  mas- 
ter to  discontinue  his  business  when  it  no  longer  ])ays,  yet 
we  are*  thoroughly  assured  that  they  never  will  do  good. 
They  will  always  do  more  harm  to  the  workmen  who  strike 
than  to  the  masters  who  are  struck  against.  "We  would 
therefore  calmly  but  seriously  recommend  working  men  to 
refrain  from  strikes,  more  especially  when  the  object  is  a 
rise  of  wages ;  and  these  cautions  we  deem  the  more  neces- 
sary at  the  present  time,  as  we  greatly  regret  to  perceive 
that  the  Dundee  ship-carpenters  have  shown  a  disposition 
to  enjraGje  in  the  same  course  that  has  been  carried  on  so 
disastrously  at  Preston.  We  hope  that  they  will  not  be 
misled  by  vague  anticipations,  and,  above  all,  that  they 
will  not  manifest  a  spirit  of  unreasoning  obstinacy,  which 
will  certainly  tend  to  defeat  the  very  purpose  they  have  in 
view.  We  must  say  a  word,  however,  on  another  matter. 
A  strike  for  a  rise  of  wages  is  not  likely  to  be  attended 
with  success.  The  time  is  altogether  another  question. 
If  workmen  are  in  a  position  to  strike  for  a  I'ise  of  wages, 
they  are  also  in  a  position  to  strike  for  shorter  time ; 
and  our  own  experience  enables  us  to  affirm  that  as  much 
work  and  as  good  work  will  be  done  in  a  short  week  as  in 
a  long  one.  We  shoald  rejoice  to  see  the  Saturday  half- 
holiday  absolutely  universal ;  and  we  recommend  all  work- 
men to  strive  for  this  great  reform,  as  incomparably  more 


THE   COTTAGES   OF   OUR  HINDS.  197 

valuable  to  themselves,  to  their  wives,  and  to  their  chil- 
dren, than  any  additional  shillings  that  they  hope  to  ob- 
tain. If  men  strike  at  all,  let  them  strike  for  the  Saturday 
half-holiday,  and  the  good  wishes  of  the  whole  community 
will  go  with  them.  To  every  workman  we  would  say,  look 
to  the  Saturday  half-holiday  as  one  of  the  most  precious 
things  that  you  can  possibly  acquire  :  get  it  by  all  means. 
Work  hard,  faithfully,  honestly,  like  a  man  ;  but  by  all 
means  get  the  Saturday  half-holiday ;  and  when  you  get 
it,  be  sure  to  make  a  good  use  of  it. 


VI. 

THE  COTTAGES  OF  OUR  HINDS. 

Wb  presented  to  the  reader  on  Saturday  last,  in  our 
report  of  the  late  half-yearly  meeting  of  the  Highland  and 
Agricultural  Society,  the  remarks  of  two  very  estimable 
noblemen  on  the  cottages  of  the  country,  especially  the 
cottages  of  hinds,  and  on  the  best  means  of  improving 
them.  It  was  stated  by  the  one  noble  speaker,  and  reit- 
erated by  the  other,  that  in  order  to  render  cottages  im- 
mensely better  than  they  are  at  present,  it  is  not  at  all 
necessary  that  they  should  be  rebuilt.  The  rebuilding  of 
them,  in  the  greater  number  of  instances,  might  be  impos- 
sible, and  in  all  cases  it  would  be  at  least  very  incon- 
venient. But  if  proprietors  had  thus  little  in  their  power 
regardiug  them,  much  might  be  done  by  the  humble 
inmates  in  the  way  of  dividing  their  single  rooms  when 
their  accommodation  chanced  to  be  greater,  and  in  iraj^art- 
ing  to  them  an  air  of  general  comfort.  It  was  held  that 
on  this  point,  therefore,  the  premiums  of  the  Society  ought 
specially  to  be  directed.  The  proprietary  of  the  country 
17* 


198  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

could  not  be  expected  to  help  their  poor  laborers  on  n 
large  scale,  by  pi'ovkling  them  with  suitable  dwellings  (a 
single  cottage  might  cost  fifty  pounds)  ;  but  then  ihey 
were  ready  to  encourage  them  in  any  feasible  way  of  help- 
ing themselves.  A  room  twelve  feet  by  sixteen  might  be 
regarded  as  a  very  pretty  sort  of  problem  ;  and  if  a  man 
and  his  wife,  with  some  eight  or  ten  children,  could  con- 
trive to  solve  tlie  difficulty  by  residing  in  it  with  comfort 
and  decency,  they  should  be  by  all  means  rewarded  for 
their  ingenuity  by  a  premium  from  the  Society.  Now,  we 
would  be  very  unwilling  to  indulge  on  this  subject  in 
aught  approaching  to  severity  of  remark ;  nor,  were  it 
otherwise,  would  we  single  out  two  of  the  more  benevo- 
lent noblemen  of  our  country  as  objects  on  which  to  be 
satirical.  Scarce  any  Scottish  nobleman  has  done  so  much 
for  his  humbler  dependants  as  the  Earl  of  Rosebery :  we 
have  been  informed  that  on  his  own  property  every  cot- 
tage has  its  two  comfortable  apartments,  and  that  many 
of  them  have  three.  Nor  is  his  Grace  the  Duke  of  Buc- 
cleuch  other,  we  believe,  than  a  well-meaning  man.  As 
we  deem  the  matter  one  of  considerable  importance,  how- 
ever, we  shall  take  the  liberty  of  soliciting  the  attention 
of  the  reader  to  a  piece  of  a  simple  narrative,  which  bears 
on  it  very  directly. 

We  passed  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1823  in  one  of 
the  wildest  and  least  accessible  districts  of  the  northwestern 
Highlands.  The  nearest  public  road  at  that  period  was  a 
long  day's  journey  away.  Among  the  humbler  people  we 
met  with  only  a  single  man  turned  of  forty  who  understood 
English.  It  was,  in  truth,  a  wild,  uncultivated  region, 
brown  and  sterile,  studded  with  rock,  blackened  with  mo- 
rasses, and  cursed  with  an  ever-weeping  climate.  The 
hills  of  hard  quartz  rock  —  of  all  the  primary  formations 
the  most  unfavorable  to  vegetation — seemed  at  least  two 
thirds  naked  ;  and  their  upper  peaks,  bleached  by  sun  and 
storm,  showed,  from  the  pale  hue  of  the  stone,  as  if  ever 
covered  by  a  spiiukling  of  fresh-fallen  snow.     The  Atlan- 


THE   COTTAGES    OF   OUR  HINDS.  199 

tic,  specked  by  the  northern  Hebrides,  stretched  away 
from  an  iron-bound  coast ;  and  here  and  there,  tliough  far 
between,  a  group  of  dark-colored  cottages,  that  rather 
resembled  huge  molehills  than  human  dwellings,  occupied 
some  of  the  deeper  inflections,  where,  for  a  short  interval, 
the  cliflTs  gave  place  to  a  strip  of  sand  or  pebbles,  or  an 
outlying  group  of  skerries  formed  a  sort  of  breakwater  to 
ward  oflT  the  violence  of  the  sea.  Every  little  village  had 
its  few  boats  and  its  few  green  patches  of  cultivation. 
Some  of  the  latter,  scarcely  larger  than  onion  beds,  seemed 
to  stand  out  from  amid  the  brown  heath  like  islands  in  the 
ocean ;  and  both  the  boats  and  the  patches  served  as  indi- 
ces to  show  how  the  poor  inhabitants  of  so  bai-ren  a  region 
contrived  to  live.  Could  we  travel  back  into  the  past, 
amid  the  rich  fields  of  the  Lothians,  for  full  ten  centuries, 
we  would  fail  to  arrive  at  so  primitive  a  state  of  things 
with  regard  to  the  common  arts  of  life  as  existed  only 
nineteen  years  ago  in  this  wild  district.  In  the  little 
straggling  village  in  our  immediate  neighborhood  every 
man  was  a  fisherman,  and  in  some  degree  an  agriculturist ; 
and  yet  there  was  neither  horse  nor  plough  among  all  its 
twenty  families.  The  ground  was  turned  up  by  the  long- 
handled  spade,  still  known  in  some  parts  of  the  Highlands 
as  the  cos-chrom  /  and  the  manure  was  carried  out  in 
spring,  and  the  produce  brought  home  in  autumn,  mostly 
by  women  in  slip-bottomed  creels.  All  the  other  arts 
practised  in  the  village  reminded  one  of  a  remote  age. 
We  have  seen  the  poor  Highland  women  bending  under 
their  burdens  of  turf  or  manure,  and  employed  at  the  same 
time  in  spinning  with  that  most  primitive  of  implements, 
the  distaff  and  spindle.  Some  of  the  boats,  caulked  with 
moss,  like  the  ancient  Danish  vessel  disinterred  some  ten 
or  twelve  years  ago  out  of  the  silt  of  an  English  river, 
were  furnished  with  sails  of  woollen,  anchors  constructed 
of  wood  and  stone,  and  tackle  spun  out  of  the  fibres  of 
moss  fir.  The  little  patches  of  cultivation  were  suited  to 
remind  one,  from  their  size,  of  the  fields  described  by  Gub 


200  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

liver ;  but  they  had,  besides,  a  peculiarity  all  their  own ; 
—  the  ground  abounded  with  stones,  many  of  them  by 
much  too  bulky  to  be  removed.  To  save  as  much  space 
as  possible,  each  of  the  larger  masses  had  its  pyramid  of 
smaller  stones  piled  upon  it  to  the  height  of  four  or  five 
feet,  and  there  were  patches  in  which  these  pyramids  lay 
well-nigh  as  thickly  grouped  together  as  tents  in  an  en- 
campment. -V  man  of  some  little  imagination  might  have 
supposed  thai  one  of  the  many  Scotch  witches  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century  had  passed  the  way  in  the  time  of  harvest, 
and  transformed  all  the  newly-reaped  sliocks  into  accumu- 
lations of  stone.  Such  was  the  agriculture  of  the  district : 
it  was  the  agriculture  of  the  first  ages,  —  the  fruit  of  the 
very  first  lesson  which  man  had  derived  from  experience, 
on  setting  himself  to  force  a  living  from  the  soil.  Nor,  it 
may  be  well  supposed,  could  the  art  of  the  builder  in  such 
a  country  be  greatly  in  advance  of  the  art  of  the  agricul- 
turist. The  human  dwellings  were  quite  as  rude  as  the 
fields.  But  we- shall  describe  one,  just  as  a  specimen  of 
the  whole. 

On  the  first  evening  of  our  arrival  in  the  district,  we 
accompanied  an  acquaintance,  to  secure  the  services  of  a 
Highlander  whom  we  were  desirous  to  engage  as  a  la- 
borer, and  who  lived  in  the  nearer  village.  Twilight  was 
falling,  but  there  remained  light  enough  to  enable  us  to 
examine  the  surrounding  forms  of  things.  The  cottage 
we  sought  was  a  low,  long,  dark  building,  whose  roof  and 
walls  sloped  in  neariy  the  same  angle,  without  any  aper- 
ture for  windows,  except  along  the  ridge  of  the  roof,  and. 
with  a  door  raised  little  more  than  four  feet  above  the 
threshold.  In  these  northwestern  regions,  where  there  falls 
about  twice  as  much  rain  as  on  any  part  of  the  eastern 
coast,  and  where,  at  some  seasons,  the  almost  incessant 
showers  beat  at  an  angle  of  inclination  varying  from  thirty 
to  sixty,  it  is  imperatively  necessary  to  render  the  side- 
walls  of  a  building  as  impervious  as  the  roof;  and  hence 
the  slope  of  the  walls, --a  slope  given  them  by  filling  up 


THE   COTTAGES   OF   OUR  HINDS.  201 

a  bulwark  of  solid  turf  against  the  comparatively  erect 
line  of  stone.  Our  first  step  into  the  interior  was  into  a 
pit  fully  two  feet  in  depth.  In  this  outer  chamber,  accord- 
ing to  the  custom  of  the  district,  the  ashes  produced  by 
the  turf  and  peat  burnt  during  the  year  had  been  suffered 
to  accumulate,  for  the  jjurposes  of  manure ;  and  as  it  was 
now  early  in  summer,  the  place  had  been  but  lately  cleared 
out.  It  was  intensely  dark,  and  filled  with  smoke  ;  and 
we  had  some  difiiculty  in  finding  the  inner  door,  the 
threshold  of  which  we  found  raised  to  the  level  of  the 
door  without.  A  step  brought  us  into  what  proved  to  be 
the  middle  apartment  of  the  cottage.  A  fire  of  turf,  enliv- 
ened by  a  few  pieces  of  moss  fir,  blazed  on  a  flat  stone  in 
the  middle  of  the  floor,  with  no  protecting  back  to  screen 
any  part  of  the  building,  so  that  the  flames  shone  equally 
all  around  on  the  rude  walls  and  the  equally  rude  furni- 
ture. On  one  side  the  fire  sat  the  master  and  builder  of 
the  mansion,  —  a  strongly-built,  red-haired,  red-whiskered 
Highlander,  —  with  two  boys,  his  sons ;  on  the  other,  the 
mistress,  —  a  thin,  sallow  woman,  —  with  her  three  daugh- 
ters. The  woman  was  busied  in  spinning  with  the  primi- 
tive implement  to  which  we  have  already  alluded  ;  now 
twirling  the  spindle  half  at  arm's  length,  and  now  coiling 
up  the  thread.  Her  girls  were  teasing  wool,  which  they 
stored  up  in  a  large  spherical  basket,  wattled  all  round, 
except  at  a  little  square  opening.  A  cloud  of  smoke,  thick 
and  flat  as  a  ceiling,  rested  overhead  ;  and  there  hung,  as 
if  dropping  out  of  it,  a  dark  drapery  of  herring-nets.  The 
inner  walls,  as  shown  by  the  red  glare  of  the  fire,  were 
formed  of  undressed  stone,  uncemented  by  mortar;  but 
the  interstices  had  been  carefully  caulked  with  dried  moss. 
The  furniture  was  somewhat  of  the  scantiest.  There  were 
a  few  deal-seats,  and  a  rude  bed-frame  in  a  corner,  half- 
filled  with  heath,  —  the  sleeping-place  of  the  boys ;  a  few 
wooden  cogs  occupied  a  recess  behind  the  woman  ;  and 
there  was  a  large  pot  suspended  over  the  fire  from  the 
roof.     But  what  we  chiefly  remarked  was,  that,  the  place, 


202  POLITICAL    AND    SOCIAL. 

rade  as  it  was,  had  what  by  much  the  gnsater  nurabei*  of 
the  dwellings  of  our  south-country  hinds  have  not,  —  the 
luxury  of  an  inner  apartment :  the  wicker  door  opened 
through  a  stone  wall ;  the  thick  turf  roof  was  at  least 
water-tight,  except  where,  beside  the  gables  (not  over  the 
fire),  there  were  two  openings  to  admit  air  and  light,  and 
to  give  egress  to  the  smoke.  Our  readers  would  smile 
were  we  to  associate  ideas  of  comfort  with  such  a  dwelling. 
Certain  it  was,  however,  that  its  inmates  could  do  so ;  and 
all  can  at  least  associate  ideas  of  decency  with  it.  The 
construction  of  Red  Murouch's  house  was  quite  as  primitive 
as  the  tillage  of  his  little  croft,  or  the  tackle  of  his  boat,  or 
the  distaff  and  spindle  employed  by  his  wife.  His  grand- 
father removed  by  twenty  generations  had  lived,  in  all 
probability,  in  just  such  another;  but  it  served  Murouch 
quite  as  well  as  its  antitype  had  served  his  remote  ancestor. 
Besides,  if  he  wished  it  better  or  larger,  could  he  not  im- 
prove or  add  to  it  ?  There  was  space  enough  outside  ; 
vast  abundance  of  stone  everywhere,  and  wood  in  the 
neighboring  hollow ;  and  Murouch,  unsophisticated,  like 
all  his  neighbors,  by  the  scheme  of  dividing  labor,  which, 
while  it  adds  to  the  skill  of  the  community,  lowers  might- 
ily that  of  the  individual,  was  a  master  of  the  entire  art  of 
building  such  houses. 

Just  six  months  after  quitting  the  Highlands,  we  were 
residing  in  one  of  the  richest  districts  in  the  Lowlands  of 
Scotland  —  one  of  those  centres  of  cultivation  from  which 
the  art  of  the  agriculturist  has  spread  itself  over  all  the 
more  accessible  portions  of  the  kingdom.  The  rent  of  land 
in  the  neighborhood  averaged  somewhat  above  five  pounds 
per  acre  ;  the  yearly  rental  of  the  parish  in  which  we  lived 
was  estimated  at  about  twenty-eight  thousand  pounds. 
The  Scottish  metropolis  lay  not  three  hours'  walk  away. 
Considerably  more  than  two  hundred  miles  intervened  be- 
tween us  and  the  scene  of  our  last  year's  labor.  We  have 
often  thought  whether  it  would  not  be  equally  correct  to 
say  that  we  had  travelled  in  advance  of  it  at  least  a  thou- 


THE   COTTAGES   OF   OUR   HINDS.  203 

sand  years.  The  whole  seemed,  viewed  in  recollection 
from  amid  the  fertile  fields  of  the  south,  as  if  belonging 
rather  to  the  remote  past  than  to  the  present.  Even  the 
most  unpractised  eye  could  not  fail  being  struck  by  the  su- 
perior style  of  the  husbandry  in  the  modern  district.  How 
very  close  the  plough  had  contrived  to  skirt  the  well-dressed 
fences  !  How  straight  the  furrows!  —  how  equal  the  braird  ! 
How  thoroughly  had  the  land  been  cleared  of  weeds ! 
And  then,  what  an  air  of  snugness  seemed  to  pervade 
the  farm-houses  of  the  district,  and  how  palpably  had  the 
experience  of  ages  been  concentrated  on  the  means  and 
appliances  of  their  several  steadings !  The  jealous  neat- 
ness, too,  with  which  the  various  gentlemen's  seats  in  the 
neighborhood  were  kept,  their  general  style,  the  appearance 
of  the  surrounding  grounds,  their  woods,  and  gardens,  and 
belts  of  shrubbery  —  all  testified  to  the  elegant  tastes  and 
habits  of  the  possessors.  Whatever  belonged  immediately 
to  the  upper  classes  had  but  one  character —  comfort  gilded 
by  the  beautiful.  And  there  was  much,  doubtless,  in  the 
very  sight  of  all  this  for  the  poor  man  to  enjoy.  We  still 
entertain  a  vivid  recollection,  distinct  as  a  picture,  of  the 
beautiful  vista  in  a  gentleman's  woods,  —  tall,  green,  finely 
arched,  close  over  head  as  the  roof  of  a  cathedral, — through 
which  we  could  see,  almost  every  evening,  as  the  twilight 
faded  into  darkness,  the  Inchkeith  light  tvvinkling  afar  off, 
like  a  star  rising  out  of  the  sea.  The  noble  grove  through 
which  it  shone  was  scarce  a  hundred  yards  distant  from 
the  humble  cottage  in  which  we  lodged. 

But  the  cottage  was  an  exceedingly  humble  one.  It 
was  one  of  a  line  on  the  wayside,  inhabited  chiefly  by  com- 
mon laborers  and  farm-servants,  —  a  cold,  imcomfortable 
hovel,  consisting  of  only  a  single  apartment,  —  by  many 
degrees  less  a  dwelling  to  our  mind,  and  certainly  less  warm 
and  snug,  than  the  cottage  of  the  west-coast  Highlander. 
The  tenant,  our  landlord,  was  an  old  farm-servant,  who  had 
been  found  guilty  of  declining  health  and  vigor  about  a 
twelvemonth  before,  and  had  been  discharged  in  conse- 


204  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

quence.  He  was  permitted  to  retain  his  dwelling,  on  the 
express  understanding  that  the  proprietor  was  not  to  be 
burdened  with  repairs  ;  and  the  thatch,  which  was  giving 
way  in  sevrral  places,  he  had  painfully  labored  to  patch 
against  the  weather  by  mud  and  turf  gathered  from  the 
wayside.  But  he  wanted  both  the  art  and  the  materials  of 
Red  Murouch.  With  every  heavy  shower  the  rain  found 
its  way  through,  and  the  curtains  of  his  two  beds,  other- 
M'ise  so  neatly  kept,  were  stained  by  dark-colored  blotches. 
The  earthern  floor  was  damp  and  uneven ;  the  walls,  of 
undressed  stone,  had  never  been  hard-cast ;  but,  by  dint 
of  repeated  whitewashings,  the  interstices  had  gradually 
filled  up.  They  were  now,  however,  all  variegated  by  the 
stains  from  the  roof.  Nor  had  the  pride  of  the  apartment, 
its  old-fashioned  eight-day  clock  or  its  chest  of  di*awers, 
escaped.  From  the  top  of  the  drawers  the  veneers  were 
beginning  to  start,  in  consequence  of  the  damp ;  and  the 
clock  gave  warning,  by  its  frequent  stops  and  irregular- 
ities, that  it  would  very  soon  cease  to  take  further  note 
of  time.  The  old  man's  wife,  still  a  neat,  tidy  woman, 
though  turned  of  sixty,  was  a  martyr  to  rheumatism  ;  and 
her  one  damp  and  gousty  room,  with  its  mere  apron-breadth 
of  partition  interposed  between  it  and  the  chinky  outer 
door,  was  not  at  all  the  place  for  her  declining  years  or 
her  racking  complaint.  She  did  her  best,  however,  to  keep 
things  in  order,  and  to  attend  to  the  comforts  of  her  hus- 
band and  her  two  lodgers ;  but  the  bad  roof  and  the  sin- 
gle apartment  were  disqualifying  circumstances,  and  they 
pressed  on  her  very  severely.  It  was  well  remarked  by 
his  Grace  the  Duke  of  Buccleuch,  that  "  the  keeping  of 
lo'clgers  along  with  families  in  cottages  where  there  is  scarce 
room  for  the  family  itself,  is  a  great  evil."  It  is  even  so  — 
a  very  great  evil.  But,  my  Lord  Duke,  there  are  still 
greater  evils  which  press  upon  the  indigent.  These  poor 
old  people  had  very  slender  means  of  living,  and  they 
found  it  necessary  to  eke  them  out  in  any  honest  way. 
Their  lodgers  too  —  humble,  hard-working  men  —  could 


THB  COTTAGES   OP  OUR  HINDS.  205 

not  afford  a  very  sumptuons  lodging-place,  nor  were  there 
any  such  in  the  neighborhood,  even  if  they  could.  There 
are  stern  necessities  that  press  upon  the  poor  in  matters 
of  this  kind,  which  we  sincerely  trust  your  Grace  may 
never  experience,  but  of  which  all  would  be  the  better  of 
knowing  just  a  very  little. 

And  this  was  all  that  civilization,  in  the  midst  of  a  well- 
nigh  perfect  agriculture,  and  amid  the  exercise  of  every 
useful  and  elegant  art,  had  done  for  the  dwelling  of  the 
poor  hind.  The  rude  husbandry  of  the  western-coast  High- 
lander had  been  left  more  than  a  thousand  years  behind  ; 
manufactures  had  made  marvellous  advances  since  the  re- 
linquishment of  the  distaff  and  spindle  ;  trade  had  imported 
many  a  luxury  since  woollen  sails  and  wooden  anchors  had 
been  abandoned ;  every  umbrageous  recess  had  its  scene  of 
elegance  and  comfort;  the  homes  of  the  poor  had  alone 
remained  stationary,  and  worse  than  stationary,  —  they  had 
sunk  below  the  level  of  semi-civilization.  But  we  are 
building  perhaps  on  a  solitary  instance,  —  attempting  to 
found  a  grievance  on  a  needle-point.  Would  that  it  were 
so!  Our  description  is  far  above  the  average,  however 
exaggerated  it  may  seem.  Take,  by  way  of  proofj  from  a 
very  admirable  little  work  on  the  subject  by  the  Rev.  Dr. 
W.  S.  Gilly  of  Norhara,  a  description  of  the  hovels  on  the 
border,  deemed  quite  good  enough  by  the  proprietary  of 
the  country  for  their  own  and  their  tenants'  hinds.  He 
selects  a  single  group  as  a  specimen  of  the  whole. 

"  Now  for  a  more  detailed  description  of  that  species  of  hut  or  hovel 
—  for  it  is  no  better —  which  prevails  in  this  district.  I  have  a  group 
of  five  such  before  my  mind's  eye.  They  belong  to  the  same  prop- 
erty, and  have  all  changed  inhabitants  within  eighteen  months.  The 
property,  I  may  add,  is  tenanted  by  one  of  the  best  and  most  enter- 
prising farmers  in  all  England.  They  are  built  of  rubble,  loosely 
cemented;  and,  from  age  and  the  badness  of  the  materials,  the  walls 
look  as  if  they  would  scarcely  hold  together.  The  chinks  gap  open 
in  many  places,  and  so  widely  that  they  freely  admit  every  wind  that 
Wows.  The  ch'.mneys  have  lost  half  their  original  height,  and  lean 
18 


206  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

on  the  •oof  with  fearful  gravitation.  The  rafters  are  evidently  rotten 
and  displaced ;  and  the  thatch,  yawning  in  some  parts  to  admit  the 
wet,  and  in  all  parts  utterly  unfit  for  its  original  purpose  of  giving 
protection  from  the  weather,  looks  more  like  the  top  of  a  dunghill 
than  of  a  cottage.  Such  is  the  exterior ;  and  when  the  hind  comes 
to  take  possession,  he  finds  it  no  better  than  a  shed.  The  wet,  if  it 
happens  to  rain,  is  making  a  puddle  on  the  earth  floor.  This  earth 
floor,  by  the  by,  is  one  of  the  causes  to  which  Erasmus  ascribed  the 
frequent  recurrence  of  epidemic  sickness  among  the  cottars  of  Eng- 
land more  than  three  hundred  years  ago.  It  is  not  only  cold  and  wet, 
but  contains  the  aggi'egate  filth  of  years  from  the  time  of  its  being 
first  used.  The  refuse  and  dropping  of  meals,  decayed  animal  and 
vegetable  matter  of  all  kinds,  these  all  mix  together,  and  exude  from 
it.  Window-frame  there  is  none.  There  is  neither  oven,  nor  cop- 
per, nor  shelf,  nor  fixture  of  any  kind.  All  these  things  the  hind 
has  to  bring  with  him,  besides  his  ordinary  articles  of  furniture. 
Imagine  the  trouble,  the  inconvenience,  and  the  expense  which  the 
poor  fellow  and  his  wife  have  to  encounter-  before  they  can  put  this 
shell  of  a  hut  into  anything  like  a  habitable  form.  This  year  I  saw 
a  family  of  eight,  —  husband,  wife,  two  sons,  and  four  daughters,  — 
■who  were  in  utter  discomfort,  and  in  despair  of  putting  themselves 
into  a  decent  condition,  three  or  four  weeks  after  they  had  come  into 
one  of  these  hovels.  In  vain  did  they  try  to  stop  up  the  crannies, 
and  to  fill  up  the  holes  in  the  floor,  and  to  arrange  their  furniture  in 
tolerably  decent  order,  and  to  keep  out  the  weather.  Alas,  what 
will  they  not  suffer  in  the  winter !  There  will  be  no  fireside  enjoj'- 
ments  for  them.  They  may  huddle  together  for  warmth,  and  heap 
coals  on  the  fire ;  but  they  will  have  chilly  beds  and  a  damp  hearth- 
stone; and  the  cold  wind  will  sweep  through  their  dismal  apartment; 
and  the  icicles  will  hang  by  the  wall,  and  the  snow  will  drift  through 
the  roof,  and  window,  and  crazy  doorplace,  in  spite  of  all  their  en- 
deavors to  exclude  it." 

Great  as  they  may  seem,  however,  these  are  merely  phys- 
ical evils ;  and  they  are  light  and  trivial  compared  with  the 
horrors  which  follow.  These  miserable  cabins  consist,  in 
by  much  the  greater  number  of  instances,  as  in  the  cottage 
of  the  poor  old  hind,  of  but  a  single  room.  We  again 
quote :  — 

"  And  into  this  apartment  are  crowded  eight,  ten,  and  even  twelve 


THE  COTTAGES  OF  OUR  HINDS.         207 

persons.  How  they  lie  down  to  rest,  how  they  sleep,  how  unuttera- 
ble horrors  are  avoided,  is  beyond  all  conception.  The  case  is  ag- 
gravated when  there  is  a  young  woman  to  be  lodged  in  this  confined 
space  who  is  not  a  member  of  the  famil)-,  but  is  hired  to  do  the  field- 
work,  for  which  every  hind  is  bound  to  provide  a  female.  It  shocks 
every  feeling  of  propriety  to  think  that  in  a  room  within  such  a  space 
as  I  have  been  describing  civilized  beings  should  be  herding  together 
without  a  decent  separation  of  age  and  sex.  So  long  as  the  agricul- 
tural system  in  this  district  requires  the  hind  to  find  room  for  a  fellow- 
servant  of  the  other  sex  in  his  cabin,  the  least  that  morality  and 
decency  can  demand  is,  that  he  should  have  a  second  apartment, 
where  the  unmarried  female  and  those  of  a  tender  age  should  sleep 
apart  from  him  and  his  wife." 

The  following  simple  story  places  the  degradation  to 
which  the  poor  hind  and  his  family  are  subjected,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  wretched  accommodation  provided  for  them, 
in  a  light  painfully  strong.  We  may  truly  remark  with 
the  poet,  in  this  case,  without  metaphor,  that  misery  makes 
strange  bedfellows. 

"  Last  Whitsuntide,  when  the  annul  lettings  were  taking  place,  a 
hind  who  had  lived  one  year  in  the  hovel  he  was  about  to  quit  called 
to  say  farewell,  and  to  thank  me  for  some  trifling  kindness  I  had  been 
able  to  show  him.  He  was  a  fine,  tall  man,  of  about  forty-five, — 
a  fair  specimen  of  the  frank,  sensible,  well-spoken,  well-informed 
Northumbrian  peasantry,  —  of  that  peasantry  of  which  a  militia 
regiment  was  composed  which  so  amazed  the  Londoners  when  it  was 
garrisoned  in  the  capital  many  years  ago,  by  the  size,  the  noble  de- 
portment, the  soldier-like  bearing,  and  the  good  conduct  of  the  men. 
I  thought  this  a  good  opportunity  of  asTcing  some  questions,  —  where 
he  was  going,  and  how  he  would  dispose  of  his  large  family  (eleven 
in  number).  He  told  me  they  were  to  inhabit  one  of  these  hinds' 
cottages,  whose  narrow  dimensions  were  less  than  twenty-four  feet  by 
fifteen ;  and  that  the  eleven  would  have  only  three  beds  to  sleep  in,  — 
that  he  himself,  his  wife,  a  daughter  of  six,  and  a  boy  of  four  years 
old  would  sleep  in  ore  bed,  —  that  a  daughter  of  eighteen,  a  son  of 
twelve,  a  son  of  ten,  and  a  daughter  of  eight,  would  have  a  second 
bed,  —  and  a  third  would  receive  his  three  sons,  of  the  age  of  twenty, 
sixteen,  and  fourteen.     '  Pray,*  said  I,  '  do  you  not  think  that  this  ia 


208  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

a  very  improper  way  of  disposing  of  your  family  ?  '  '  Yes,  certainly,* 
•was  the  answer;  'it  is  very  improper  in  a  Chr'islian  point  of  view; 
but, what  can  we  do  until  they  build  us  better  houses  ?  ' " 

It  were  needless  to  expatiate  on  this  picture  ;  it  is  quite 
enough  tliat  we  hold  it  up  to  the  reader.  There  is  much 
to  militate  against  the  character  of  the  poor  hind  all  over 
the  country.  His  very  situation  is  adverse,  however  com- 
paratively favorable  the  circumstances  with  which  it  may 
chance  to  be  surrounded.  When  aggravated  by  the  hoi-- 
rors  of  the  bothy  system,  deterioration  is  inevitable ;  nor 
can  any  one  honestly  or  rationally  hold  that  the  gross 
cruelty  which  consigns  him  to  situations  such  as  the  one 
described  —  situations  wholly  subversive  of  that  nice  del- 
icacy of  feeling  which  is  at  once  the  safeguard  and  orna- 
ment of  virtue  —  does  not  furnish  a  necessary  item  in  his 
degradation.  Mark  the  effects.  In  an  interesting  report, 
on  farm-servants,  of  the  very  reverend  the  Synod  of  Perth 
and  Stirling,  published  in  October  last,  we  find  the  follow- 
ing astounding  passage.  It  embodies  a  piece  of  moral 
statistics  in  connection  with  this  hapless  class,  as  furnished 
by  the  returns  of  thirty-nine  parishes :  — 

"  Of  the  public  scandals  chargeable  on  farm-servants,  the  propor- 
tion varies  considerably  in  diiferent  parishes ;  but  in  all  of  them, 
•with  three  exceptions,  the  number  chargeable  on  that  class  of  the 
parishioners  is  larger  —  in  some  of  them  much  larger  —  than  on  all 
the  others  put  together,  although  in  no  one  instance  does  that  class 
constitute  anything  like  a  majority  of  the  inhabitants.  In  those  three 
cases  -where  the  scandals  among  the  farm-servants  are  fewer  than 
those  among  the  other  classes,  the  proportion  of  the  -whole  number 
of  farm-servants  to  the  other,  and  especially  the  working  classes, 
is  exceedingly  small.  It  requires  to  be  particularly  noticed,  that  in 
one  parish,  the  scandals  which  have  occurred  of  late  among  the  farm- 
servants  are  reported  to  be  nine  tenths  of  the  whole." 

"  Where  is  thy  brother  Cain  ?  —  the  voice  of  thy  brother's 
blood  crieth  unto  me  from  the  ground."  This  surely  is  not 
one  of  the  matters  in  which  our  aristocracy  do  well  to  study 


THE  COTTAGES   OF  OUR  HINDS.  200 

a  niggard  economy.  With  all  due  respect,  therefore,  for  the 
excellent  and  benevolent  nobleman  who  advocated  an  op- 
posite view  of  the  case  in  the  meeting  of  last  week,  we 
must  be  permitted  to  say,  that  it  will  not  do  to  speak  of 
forty-pound  impossibilities  and  twenty-pound  inconvenien- 
ces, when  the  morality  of  the  country  is  thus  at  stake.  It 
will  not  do  merely  to  propose  premiums  for  introducing 
beds  with  woollen  screens  in  front  into  the  one  miserable 
npartment  of  the  poor  neglected  hind,  or  to  incite  him  to 
task  his  ingenuity  in  partitioning  the  narrow  area  in  which 
he  is  compelled  to  cram  his  family.  Pecuniary  sacrifices 
must  be  made  by  the  proprietary  of  the  country,  even 
should  they  have  to  part,  in  consequence,  with  one  or  two 
superfluous  horses  or  a  few  supernumerary  dogs.  Mere 
alterations  will  not  do.  In  the  language  in  which  Watts, 
in  one  of  his  less-known  lyrics,  describs  the  leprous  house, 
they  m jst  — 

"  Since  deep  the  fatal  spot  is  grown, 
Break  down  the  timber  and  dig  up  the  stone." 
18» 


210  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL, 


VII. 

THE  BOTHT  SYSTEM. 

Most  of  our  readers  must  know  what  the  bothy  system 
is.  A  very  considerable  number  of  the  farm-steadings  of 
the  country,  built  on  the  most  approved  plan,  with  roomy 
courts  and  sheds  for  the  breeding  of  cattle,  and  stablea 
constructed  on  the  best  possible  principle  for  the  horses, — 
with  all,  in  short,  that  the  modern  system  of  agriculture 
demands,  —  have  no  adequate  accommodation  for  the  la- 
borers by  whom  the  farms  attached  to  them  are  wrought. 
The  horses  and  cattle  are  well  provided  for,  but  not  the 
men.  A  wretched  outhouse,  —  the  genuine  bothy,  —  fur- 
nished with  a  few  rude  stools,  a  few  deal  bedsteads,  a  few 
bowls  of  tin  or  earthen  ware,  a  water-pail,  and  a  pot, 
serves  miserably  to  accommodate  some  eight  or  ten  labor- 
ers, all  of  them,  of  course,  single  men.  Here  they  kindle 
their  own  fire,  cook  their  own  victuals,  make  their  own  beds. 
The  labors  of  the  farm  employ  them  from  nine  to  ten 
hours  daily ;  the  grooming  and  feeding  of  their  horses  at 
least  an  hour  more.  The  rest  of  their  time  falls  to  be  passed 
in  their  miserable  home.  They  return  to  it  often  wet  and 
fatigued,  especially  in  the  briefer  and  stormier  months  of 
the  year,  just  as  the  evening  has  fallen,  and  find  all  dark 
and  chill:  the  fire  has  to  be  lighted,  —  in  some  districts 
even  the  very  fuel  to  be  procured  ;  the  water  to  be  brought 
from  the  well ;  the  hasty  and  unsavory  meal  to  be  prepared. 
It  is  scarce  possible  to  imagine  circumstances  of  greater 
discomfort.  The  staple  food  of  the  laborer  is  generally 
oatmeal,  cooked  in  careless  haste,  —  as  might  be  anticipated 
in  the  circumstances,  —  by  mixing  a  portion  in  a  bowl  with 


THE   BOTHY   SYSTEM.  211 

hot  water  and  a  little  salt ;  and  often  for  weeks  and  montha 
together  there  is  no  change  in  either  the  materials  of  this 
his  necessarily  heating  and  unwholesome  meal,  or  in  the 
mode  of  preparing  it.  The  farmer,  his  master,  in  too  many 
instances  takes  no  further  care  of  him  after  his  labors  for 
the  day  are  over.  He  represents  merely  a  certain  quantum 
of  power  purchased  at  a  ceitain  price,  and  applied  to  a 
certain  purpose ;  and  as  it  is,  unluckily,  power  purchased 
by  the  half-year,  and  abundant  in  the  market,  there  is  no 
necessity  that  it  should  be  husbanded  from  motives  of 
economy,  like  that  of  the  farmer's  horses  or  of  his  steam- 
engine;  and  therefore  little  heed  is  taken  though  it  should 
thus  run  to  waste.  The  consequences  are  in  most  cases 
deplorable.  It  used  to  be  a  common  remark  of 'Bui'ns,  — 
no  inadequate  judge,  surely,  —  that  the  more  highly  culti- 
vated he  found  an  agricultural  district,  the  more  ignorant 
and  degraded  he  almost  always  found  the  people.  Man 
was  discovered  to  have  deteriorated  at  least  as  much  as  the 
corn  and  cattle  had  improved.  Now,  in  Scotland  there 
has  been  a  very  obvious  reason  for  this.  The  altered  cir- 
cumstances of  the  country  rendered  inevitable  the  intro- 
duction of  the  large-farm  system,  and  broke  down  our 
rural  population,  composed  almost  exclusively  of  what  we 
still  term  the  small  tenantry,  —  a  moral  and  religious  race, 
—  into  two  extreme  classes,  —  gentlemen  farmers  and  flirm- 
servants.  The  farmers  composed,  of  course,  but  a  compar- 
atively small  portion  of  the  whole  ;  nor,  though  furnishing 
many  high  examples  of  intelligence  and  worth,  can  we 
equal  them  as  a  body  with  the  class  which  they  supplanted. 
Hitherto  they  have  lived  less  in  the  "  eye "  of  the  great 
"Taskmaster."  They  took  their  place,  not  in  the  front  of 
the  common  people,  but  in  the  rear  of  the  aristocracy  : 
they  passed,  to  employ  the  favorite  proverb  of  the  poet 
whose  remark  we  are  attempting  to  illustrate,  from  the 
*^  head  of  the  commonalty  to  the  tail  of  the  gentry P  The 
other  and  greatly  more  numerous  class  proved  much  more 
decidedly  inferior.      The  tenant  of  from  fifteen   to  fifty 


212  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

pounds  per  annum  necessarily  occupied  a  place  in  which, 
in  accordance  with  the  distinguishing  characteristic  of  the 
species  as  rational  creatures,  he  had  to  look  both  before  and 
after  him.  He  had  to  think  and  act ;  to  enact  by  turns  the 
agriculturist  and  the  corn-merchant ;  to  manage  his  house- 
hold, and  to  provide  for  terra-day.  He  was  alike  placed 
beyond  the  temptation  of  apeing  his  landlord,  or  of  sinking 
into  a  mere  ploughing  and  harrowing  machine.  But,  in 
many  instances,  into  such  a  machine  the  farm-servant 
sunk.  Still,  however,  there  remained  in  his  lot  circum- 
stances favorable  to  the  develo])ment  of  the  better  parts 
of  his  nature.  There  is  much  in  having  a  iiome  ;  nor  was 
he  placed  beyond  those  ennobling  influences  of  religion 
which  are  scarce  less  necessary  for  enabling  man  rightly 
to  perform  his  part  in  this  world  than  to  prepare  him  for 
another.  Chiefly,  however,  from  motives  of  a  miserable 
economy,  the  unnatural  bothy  system  was  introduced,  and 
with  the  disastrous  eflfects  described.  It  promised  to  spare 
some  of  our  landlords  the  expense  of  providing  cottages ; 
and  some  of  their  tenantry  expected  to  have  their  farms 
more  cheaply  wrought  by  single  than  by  married  men. 
We  have  seen  more  than  the  mere  outsides  of  bothies,  and 
know  from  experience,  that  though  they  may  be  fit  dwell- 
ings for  hogs  and  horses,  they  are  not  fit  dwellings  for 
immortal  ci-eatures,  who  begin  in  this  world  their  education 
for  eternity. 

Nearly  twenty  years  ago,  we  lived  for  a  short  time  in  an 
agricultural  district  in  the  north  of  Scotland,  on  the  farm 
of  one  of  the  first  introducers  of  the  bothy  system  into 
that  part  of  the  country.  He  has  been  dead  for  years,  nor 
do  we  know  that  any  of  his  relatives  survive.  He  had 
been  a  bold  speculator  in  his  time,  and  had  risen,  with  the 
rise  of  the  large-farm  system,  into  the  enjoyment  of  a  very 
considerable  income ;  but  instead  of  regarding  it  as  mere 
capital  in  the  forming,  —  the  merchant's  true  estimate  of 
his  gains,  —  he  had  dealt  by  it  as  the  landed  gentleman 
does  in  most  cases  with  his  yearly  rental.     His  stylo  of 


THE  BOTHY  SYSTEM.  213 

living  had  more  than  kept  pace  with  his  means  ;  a  change 
had  taken  place  in  his  circumstances  at  that  eventful  period, 
so  very  trying  to  many  of  similar  character,  when  England, 
at  the  close  of  her  long  war  with  France,  ceased  to  be  the 
workshop  and  general  agency-office  of  Europe ;  and  lie 
was  now  an  old  man,  and  on  the  eve  of  bankruptcy.  The 
appearance  of  his  steadings  and  fields  consorted  well  at 
the  time  with  his  general  circumstances.  The  stone  fences 
were  ruinous ;  the  hedges  gapped  by  the  half-tended  cattle. 
Harvest  was  just  over,  and  on  his  farm  at  least  it  had  been 
a  miserably  scanty  one;  but  it  would  have  been  somewhat 
better  with  a  little  more  care.  In  walking  over  one  of 
his  fields,  we  counted  well-nigh  a  dozen  sheaves  scattered 
about  aihong  the  stubble,  that  seemed  to  have  fallen  from 
the  carts  at  leading  time,  and  were  now  fastened  to  the 
earth  by  the  grains  having  struck  their  shoots  downward 
and  taken  root.  His  steadings,  though  they  wore  a  neg- 
lected look,  were  of  modern,  substantial  masonry,  and  well 
designed,  —  the  stables  roomy,  the  cattle-courts  and  sheds 
formed  on  the  most  approved  plan.  Very  different,  how- 
ever, was  the  appearance  of  the  building  in  which  his  farm- 
servants  found  their  sort  of  half-shelter.  Some  twenty  or 
thirty  years  before  it  had  been  a  barn  ;  for  it  had  formed 
part  of  an  older  steading,  of  which  all  the  other  buildings 
had  been  pulled  down  to  make  way  for  the  more  modern 
erection.  It  was  a  dingy,  low,  thatched  building,  bulged 
in  the  side  walls  in  a  dozen  different  places,  and  green  atop 
with  chickweed  and  stonecrop.  One  long  apartment,  with- 
out partition  or  ceiling,  occupied  the  interior  from  gable  to 
gable.  A  row  of  undressed  deal-beds  ran  along  the  sides. 
There  was  a  fire  at  each  gable,  or  rather  a  place  at  which 
fires  might  be  lighted,  for  there  were  no  chimneys ;  the 
narrow  slits  in  the  walls  were  crammed  with  turf;  the 
roof  leaked  in  a  dozen  different  places;  and  along  the 
ridge  the  sky  might  be  seen  from  end  to  end  of  the  apart- 
ment.   We  learned  to  know  what  o'clock  it  was,  when  we 


214  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

awoke  in  the  night-time,  by  the  stars  which  we  saw  glim- 
mering through  the  opening. 

It  was,  in  truth,  a  comfortless  habitation  for  human 
creatures  in  a  wet  and  gusty  November,  and  the  inmates 
were  as  rugged  as  their  dwelling-place  was  rude.  We 
need  hardly  say  that  none  of  them  could  regard  it  as  a 
home.  It  was  the  gloomy  season  of  the  year,  when  the 
night  falls  fast,  abridging  the  labors  of  the  day;  and  ere 
they  returned  to  their  miserable  hovel  in  the  evening,  all 
was  deep  twilight  without,  and  all  darkness  within.  The 
fuel  had  to  be  procured,  the  fire  to  be  kindled,  water  to  be 
brought  from  the  well,  and  the  unsavory  meal  to  be  pre- 
pared ;  and  all  this  by  men  stiff  with  fatigue,  and  not 
unfrequently  soaked  with  wet.  It  was  no  easy  rhatter  at 
times  to  light  the  fi"re  :  the  fuel  often  got  damp,  and,  when 
at  length  lighted,  burnt  dead  and  cheerless.  There  was  a 
singular  want,  too,  of  the  ordinary  providence  among  the 
inmates,  and  it  could  be  shown  in  a  matter  slight  as  this. 
No  provision  was  made  in  the  morning  for  the  fire  of  the 
night.  If  the  rain  fell,  their  fuel  and  their  tempers  were 
just  so  much  the  worse  in  consequence  ;  and  that  was  all. 
Does  the  reader  remember  Crabbe's  admii-able  stroke  of 
nature  in  his  "  Phoebe  Dawson  ?  "  He  describes  the  poor 
thing  as  almost  heartbroken  in  her  misery,  and  yet  strug- 
gling with  it  in  patient  silence  ;  but  a  single  drop  serves  to 
make  the  full  cup  run  over.  When  dragging  herself  pain- 
fully along  the  green,  with  her  broken  pitcher  in  her  one 
hand  and  sustaining  her  child  with  the  other,  she  sinks 
ankle-deep  in  a  quagmire.  The  mischance,  slight  as  it 
may  seem,  is  the  single  drop  which  more  than  fills  the  cup, 
and  she  bm'sts  out  into  a  hysteric  fit  of  weeping.  We 
have  seen  matters  quite  as  slight  rouse  into  fierceness,  in 
the  bothy,  tempers  already  soured  by  bitter  discontent. 
The  inmates,  if  careless  of  their  master's  interests,  were 
scarce  less  careless  of  their  own  comforts.  A  little  hot 
water  poured  on  a  handful  of  oatmeal,  with  a  sprinkling  of 
Bait,  furnished  the  thrice-a-day  meal.     Had  the  materials 


THE   BOTHY   SYSTEM.  215 

at  their  command  been  more  luxuriant,  we  question  much 
whether  they  would  have  taken  the  trouble  to  prepare 
them.  It  seems  natural  for  men  in  such  circumstances  to 
be  cai'eless  of  themselves,  and  equally  natural  for  them  to 
avenge  on  the  cause  of  their  general  discomfort  the  irri- 
tating effects  of  their  own  indifferency  and  lack  of  care. 
There  was  a  large  amount  of  rude  sarcasm  in  the  bothy, 
and,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  a  great  deal  of  laughter.  It 
has  been  remarked  by,  we  think,  a  French  writer,  that  the 
people  of  despotic  governments  laugh  more  than  those 
of  free  states.  We  never  heard  the  name  of  the  farmer 
mentioned  among  his  servants  without  some  accompanying 
expression  of  dislike ;  we  never  saw  one  of  them  manifest 
the  slightest  regard  for  his  interest.  They  ill-treated  his 
horses,  neglected  his  cattle,  left  his  corn  to  rot  in  the  fields. 
Some  of  them  could  speak  of  his  approaching  ruin  with 
positive  glee.  What  we  would  fain  have  said  to  him  then 
may  not  be  without  its  use  to  others  now.  "  You,  in  your 
utter  selfishness,  have  spoiled  the  men  whom  you  employ  ; 
and  they,  in  turn,  are  spoiling  your  horses  and  cattle  and 
corn,  and  glorying  in  the  ruin  which  is  just  on  the  eve  of 
overtaking  you.  All  right.  There  is  no  getting  above  the 
natural  laws.  Alkalies  neutralize  acids ;  dense  bodies  in- 
variably descend  when  placed  in  fluids  lighter  than  them- 
selves; and  men,  when  they  are  spoiled,  spoil  all  other 
things." 

Scarce  any  one  except  Crabbe  could  have  done  full  jus- 
tice to  the  interior  of  the  bothy.  We  remember  there  was 
a  poacher,  —  a  desperate,  thick-set,  black-visaged  fellow, — 
who  used  to  steal  in  about  midnight  with  his  gun,  when 
all  was  dark  and  quiet,  and  draw  himself  up  into  one  of 
the  beds.  He  was  of  the  stuff  that  felons  are  made  of,  — 
beyond  comparison  more  a  criminal  than  any  of  the  in- 
mates of  the  bothy;  and  his  occasional  presence  served  to 
show,  by  the  force  of  contrast,  that  the  others  were  nothing 
worse  than  just  useful  members  of  society,  of  the  average 
character,  lucklessly  spoiled.     It  was  the  bothy  system  that 


216  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

had  made  them  what  they  were.  The  fact,  however, 
seems  not  unworthy  of  being  noted,  that  the  poacher 
should  have  come  to  harbor  in  such  a  place.  He  was  a 
man  living  in  a  state  of  warfare  with  the  upper  classes,  — 
a  black-fisher  and  a  breaker  into  game  preserves;  but  no 
inmate  of  the  bothy  thought  a  whit  the  worse  of  him  for 
his  trade.  He  annoyed  only  people  of  the  same  class  with 
their  master,  and  could  there  be  harm  in  that  ?  Immedi- 
ately after  dinner,  especially  when  the  fuel  was  bad,  most 
of  the  bothy-men  disappeared.  There  was  a  small  village 
about  a  mile  away,  to  which  they  generally  resorted.  It 
had  its  smithy  and  its  public  house ;  and  in  the  latter  there 
were  rustic  dances  got  up  at  least  once  a  fortnight,  at 
which  all  the  men  of  the  bothy  were  sure  to  attend.  A 
young  jemmy  lad  —  the  beau  of  the  party,  who  used  at 
times  to  wear  his  Sunday  coat  of  red  tartan  at  the  plough, 
and  who,  had  he  been  born  to  a  more  fitting  sphere,  would 
haply  have  smoked  cigars  and  siJorted  moustaches  on 
Prince's  Street — had  quite  a  knack  at  getting  up  these 
entertainments,  and  in  pro^^iding  his  companions  with 
partners  from  all  the  farmhouses  round.  It  was  generally 
late  in  the  morning,  on  such  occasions,  ere  they  got  home ; 
and  the  unsteady  tread  as  they  groped  along  the  floor  for 
their  beds,  or  the  previous  fumbling  at  the  latch,  gave  evi- 
dence in  most  cases  that  the  protracted  merry-making  had 
terminated  in  drunkenness.  But  we  find  we  must  abridge 
our  description.  We  may  sum  up  the  whole  by  remarking 
that  the  evils  of  the  bothy  system  are  of  a  threefold  char- 
acter,—  economic,  intellectual,  religious.  Our  agricultur- 
ists are,  fortunately,  becoming  convinced  of  the  first,  —  a 
conviction  which  may  lead,  in  time,  through  the  abolition 
of  the  system,  to  the  removal  of  the  others.  It  is  scarce 
possible  for  the  inmate  of  a  bothy  to  cultivate  his  mind. 
The  bothy  is  a  place  in  which  the  cogitative  faculties  fall 
asleep ;  the  higher  sentiments  of  our  nature  fare  no  better. 
As  for  religion,  it  may  be  enough  to  remark,  that  we  have 
not  yet  seen  a  bothy  in  which  the  Sabbath  could  be  properly 


THE  BOTHY   SYSTEM.  217 

kept :  the  ploughman  who  entertained  a  due  reverence  for 
the  Sabbath  would  walk  out  into  the  fields.  Cobbett,  during 
his  short  stay  in  this  country,  acquainted  himself  with  the 
system,  and  was  by  much  too  quick-sighted  not  to  detect 
its  evils.  "Better,"  he  said,  in  his  own  extreme  style,— 
"better  the  fire-raisings  of  Kent  than  the  bothy  system  of 
Scotland."  We  are  far  from  reiterating  the  remark.  We 
would  deem,  on  the  conti'ary,  fire-raisings,  such  as  those  of 
Kent,  one  of  the  worst  consequences  that  could  result  from 
it,  though  perhaps  not  one  of  the  most  improbable.  We 
may  be  permitted  to  ask,  however,  w^hether  the  Scottish 
Church  is  much  to  be  blamed  for  having  endeavored  to  lay 
on  such  a  system  what  Wordsworth  well  terms  "the  strong 
hand  of  her  purity  5*' 
19 


218  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 


VIII. 

THE  HIGHLAND S."^ 

"  It  iri  vei'y  sad  that  the  people  of  this  fine  wild  country 
Lave  not  got  enough  to  eat ;  but,  depend  on't,  we  will  col- 
lect no  inoi'e  money  for  them  in  England.  We  have 
already  done  our  best  to  help  them,  and  they  must  now 
help  themselves."  Such  was  the  remark  of  a  comfortable- 
looking  Englishman  whom  we  encountered,  a  few  weeks 
ago,  among  the  wilds  of  the  northern  Highlands  ;  and, 
judging  from  the  indifferent  success  which  has  attended 
tlie  recent  efforts  to  form  a  second  fund  in  behalf  of  the 
suffering  Highlander,  it  seems  to  represent  pretty  fairly  the 
average  feeling  and  general  determination  of  the  country 
on  the  subject.  Charity  on  a  large  scale,  and  directed 
on  distant  objects,  soon  exhausts  itself  It  is  competent, 
if  thoroughly  roused,  to  grapple  with  the  necessities  of  one 
famine,  and  to  do  a  very  little  for  a  second ;  but  a  third 
wearies  it ;  and,  should  famine  become  chronic,  it  leaves 

1  At  this  date,  1862,  the  depopulation  of  the  Highlands  is  still  rapidly  going  on. 
Not  half  a  mile  from  the  spot  where  we  write,  in  the  northwest  Highlands, 
many  families  were  ejected  from  their  holdings  but  a  few  months  ago.  Thefac- 
tm — that  dreaded  middleman  of  the  people  —  came  with  the  underlings  of  the 
law,  with  spade  and  pickaxe,  and  left  literally  not  one  stone  upon  another  of 
their  poor  cottages  standing.  I  can  see  a  miserable  hovel  into  which  several 
families  have  crowded,  who  had  before  separate  holdings  of  their  own.  I  have 
no  hesitation  in  saying  that  the  proprietor  ought  to  be  held  legally  bound,  in 
such  cases,  either  to  provide  other  home  accommodation  or  the  means  of  emi- 
gration. Such  scenes  ought  not  to  be  allowed  to  disgrace  a  Christian  country. 
But  even  where  the  inhabitants  are  allowed  to  remain  on  their  miserable  and 
insufficient  crofts,  tlie  able-bodied  —  that  is,  the  choicest  of  the  population  — 
are  rapidly  emigrating.  "  There  is  not  a  lad  worth  anr/thing,"  said  a  person,  the 
other  day,  who  had  just  left  a  ver)'  large  strath  at  some  twenty  miles  distance,  — 
"  there  is  not  a  lad  worth  anything  that  is  not  going  away  to  New  Zealand,  or 
some  other  place." 

The  people  arc,  indeed,  oppressed  with  a  sense  of  utter  poverty,  and  a  total 


THE  HIGHLANDS.  219 

it  to  devastate  unheeded,  and  ends  where  it  is  said  to  begin, 
by  exerting  itself  at  home.  Nor  do  we  see,  man  being  the 
impulsive  creatui'e  that  he  is,  how  his  charity,  if  voluntary 
and  at  large,  is  to  be  made  to  act  other  than  paroxysraally 
and  at  wide  intervals.  We  must  be  content,  we  are  afraid, 
to  accept  it  as  a  fact,  that,  even  should  our  poor  Highland- 
ers not  have  enough  to  eat  for  several  years  to  come,  there 
will  be  very  little  more  money  collected  for  them  in  Eng- 
land or  elsewhere ;  and  that,  however  great  the  difficulty 
which  attaches  to  the  "state  of  the  Highlands"  problem, 
it  is  a  difficulty  with  which  our  own  country,  and  in  espe- 
cial the  Highlands  themselves,  must  be  prepared  to  grapple, 
undiverted  by  any  vain  hopes  of  eleemosynary  aid  from 
without. 

The  difficulty  is  certainly  very  great,  and  it  has  been 
vastly  enhanced  by  the  late  years  of  famine.  We  are  old 
enough  to  remember  the  northern  Highlands,  rather  more 
than  thirty  years  ago,  when  there  were  whole  districts  of 
the  interior,  untouched  by  the  clearing  system,  in  posses- 
sion of  the  aboriginal  inhabitants.  And  if  asked  to  sum 
up  in  one  word  the  main  difference  between  the  circum- 


inability  to  rise  above  it.  In  many  places  their  circumstances  are  made  aa 
■wretclied  as  possible,  on  purpose  to  starve  them  out.  There  are  a  few  propri- 
etors—  such  as  Sir  Iteuneth  M'Kenzie  of  Gairloch  —  who  respect  the  feelings 
of  those  who  have  been  for  generations  located  on  their  properties;  but  these 
are  very  few.  It  is  but  justice,  too,  to  the  present  and  late  noble  proprietors  of 
Sutherland  to  say,  that,  notwithstanding  the  melancholy  clearings,  —  for  which, 
of  course,  they  individually  are  not  responsible,  —  such  of  their  small  tenantry 
as  remain  are  not  rack-rented.  They  are,  in  fact,  very  leniently  dealt  with  in 
this  respect.  But  nothing  can  ever  make  the  iiighlander  what  he  was,  but  that 
interest  in  the  soil  which  he  has  lost.  Every  Highlander  formerly  was  possessed 
of  all  those  feelings  which  constitute  much  that  is  valuable  in  the  birthright  of 
true  gentlemen,  —  a  long-descended  lineage,  a  sense  of  status,  and  property,  and 
an  intense  attachment  to  home  and  country.  We  fear  that  we  have  seen  nearly 
the  last  of  this  noble  race  on  the  battlefield  of  the  Crimea;  and  that  soon,  unless 
a  marvellous  revolution  takes  place,  the  so-called  Highland  regiments  may  be 
Irish,  or  what  they  please,  but  not  Highlanders.  But  if  the  mountains  and 
moors  only  were  let  for  deer-shootings,  and  the  soil  proper  were  restored  to  its 
children  in  farms  capable  of  supporting  families,  this  calamity  might  yet  be 
averted ;  nor  would  the  proprietors,  in  the  long  run,  be  the  losers,  in  a  pecuniary 
point  of  view.    We  are  disposed  to  think  the  contrary  would  be  the  case. 


220  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

stances  of  the  Highlander  in  these  and  in  later  times,  oui 
one  word  would  be,  that  most  important  of  all  vocables  to 
the  2)olitical  economist,  —  capital.  The  Highlander  was 
never  wealthy ;  the  inhabitant  of  a  wild  mountainous  dis- 
trict, formed  of  the  primary  rocks,  never  are.  But  he 
possessed  on  the  average  his  six,  or  eight,  or  ten  head  of 
cattle,  and  his  small  flock  of  sheep,  and  when  —  as  some- 
times happened  in  the  high-lying  districts —  the  corn  crop 
turned  out  a  failure,  the  sale  of  a  few  cattle  or  sheep  more 
than  served  to  clear  scores  with  the  landlord,  and  enabled 
him  to  purchase  his  winter  and  spring  supply  of  meal  in 
the  Lowlands.  He  Avas  thus  a  capitalist,  and  possessed  the 
capitalist's  peculiar  advantage  of  not  living  "  from  hand 
to  mouth,"  but  on  an  accumulated  fund,  which  always  stood 
between  him  and  absolute  want,  though  not  between  him 
and  positive  hardship,  and  enabled  him  to  rest  during  a 
year  of  scarcity  on  his  own  resources,  instead  of  throwing 
himself  on  the  charity  of  his  Lowland  neighbors.  And  in 
these  times  he  never  did  throw  himself  on  the  charity  of 
his  Lowland  neighbors.  Nay,  in  what  were  emphatically 
termed  the  "  dear  years "  of  the  beginning  of  the  present 
and  the  latter  half  of  the  past  century,  the  humbler  people 
of  the  Lowlands,  especially  our  Lowland  mechanics  and 
laborers,  suffered  more  than  the  crofters  of  the  Highlands, 
and  this  mainly  from  the  circumstance  that,  as  the  failure 
of  the  crops  which  induced  the  scarcity  was  a  corn  failure, 
not  a  failure  of  grass  and  pasture,  the  humbler  Highlanders 
had  what  the  humbler  Lowlanders  wanted,  —  sheep  and 
cattle, —  which  continued  to  sujjply  them  with  food  and 
raiment ;  while  the  others,  depending  on  corn  almost  ex- 
clusively, and  accustomed  to  deal  with  the  draper  for  their 
articles  of  clothing,  were  reduced  by  the  high  price  of  pro- 
visions to  great  straits.  In  truth,  the  golden  age  of  the  High- 
lands was  comprised  in  that  period  which  extended  from 
shortly  after  the  suppression  of  the  rebellion  of  1745,  and 
the  abolition  of  the  hereditary  jurisdictions,  down  till  the 
commencement  of  the  clearance  system.   It  is  to  this  period  . 


THE   HIGHLANDS.  221 

that  Mrs.  Grant's  description  of  Celtic  habits  and  of  Celtic 
character  belong,  and  which  give  one  the  idea  of  so  con- 
tented, and,  in  the  main,  so  comfortable  a  people,  that, 
save  for  our  own  early  recollections  when  we  lived  among 
the  Highlanders,  we  would  be  disposed  to  suspect  that  the 
good  lady  had  drawn  on  her  imagination  for  the  coloring 
of  her  pictures.  Previous  to  the  long  wars  of  the  first 
French  revolution,  the  people  of  our  country  generally  did 
not  work  so  hard  as  they  do  now.  One  set  of  mechanics, 
such  as  our  weavers,  had  not  to  contend  with  machinery, 
and  earned  good  wages  in  comparatively  "  short  hours  ;" 
another  class,  such  as  masons  and  carpenters,  had  not  to 
woi"k,as  now,  under  the  competition  of  the  estimate  system, 
but  wrought  easily  on  day's  pay.  The  Highlander,  whose 
labors  were  more  prevailingly  pastoral  than  agricultural, 
wrought  still  less  than  either  class  ;  but  having  less  to 
compete  with,  the  little  which  he  did  work  served  his  turn. 
And  as  his  mode  of  life  was  favorable  to  the  development 
of  the  military  spirit,  —  a  spirit  which  the  traditions  of 
the  country  served  mightily  to  foster,  —  great  numbers  of 
the  young  men  of  the  country,  of  a  very  different  class 
from  those  that  usually  enlist  in  England  and  the  Low- 
lands, entered  the  army,  and  our  Highland  regiments  were 
composed  of  at  once  the  best  men  and  the  best  soldiers  in 
the  service.  It  was  early  in  this  period  that  the  eloquent 
Chatham  could  boast,  in  his  place  in  Parliament,  that,  in- 
different whether  a  man's  cradle  had  been  rocked  to  the 
south  or  north  of  the  Tweed,  he  had  seen  high  military 
merit  among  the  Scottish  mountains  ;  and  that,  calling 
forth  from  amid  their  recesses,  to  the  service  of  the  coun- 
try, a  "  hardy  and  dauntless  race  of  men,  they  had  con- 
quered for  it  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe." 

With  the  wars  of  the  first  French  revolution  there  was 
a  great  change  introduced  into  the  country.  The  wheels 
of  its  industry  were  quickened  by  the  pressure  of  taxation, 
and  by  the  introduction  of  a  system  of  competition  with 
machinery,  on  the  one  hand,  that  lengthened  the  term  of 
19* 


222  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

labor  by  reducing  its  remuneration,  and  with  the  "  estimate 
system"  on  the  other.     Nor  was  it  in  the  nature  of  things 
that  the  Highlands  should  long  remain  unaffected  by  this 
change.     The  price  of  pi-ovisions  rose  in  England  and  the 
low  country,  and  with  the  price  of  provisions  the  rent  of 
land.  The  Highland  proprietor  naturally  enough  bethought 
him  how  his  rental  was  also  to  be  increased;  and,  as  a  con- 
sequence of  the  conclusion  at  which  he  arrived,  the  sheep- 
farm  and  clearing  system  began.     Many  thousand  High- 
landers, ejected  from  their  snug  holdings,  employed  their 
little  capital  in  emigrating  to  Canada  or  the  States;  and 
there,  in  most  cases,  save  in  very  inhospitable  localities,  as 
in  the  Cape  Breton  district,  the  little  capital  increased,  and 
a  rude  plenty  continues  to  be  enjoyed  by  their  descendants. 
Many  thousands  more,  however,  fell  down  upon  the  coasts 
of  the  country,  and,  on  moss-covered  moors  or  bare,  exposed 
promontories,  little  suited  for  the  labors  of  the  agriculturist, 
commenced  a  sort  of  amphibious  life  as  crofters  and  fisher- 
men; and  there,  located  on  an  ungenial  soil,  and  prose- 
cuting with  but  indifferent  skill  a  precarious  trade,  their 
little  capital  dribbled  out  of  their  hands,  and  they  became 
the  poorest  of  men.     Meanwhile,  in  some  parts  of  the 
Highlands  and  Islands  a  busy  commerce  sprung  up,  which 
employed,  much  to  the  profit  of  the  landlord,  several  thou- 
sands of  the  inhabitants.   The  manufacture  of  kelp  rendered 
tracts  of  barren  shore  and  inhospitable  islets  of  more  value 
than  the  richest  land  in  Scotland ;  and,  under  the  impetus 
given  by  full  employment,  and,  if  not  ample,  at  least  re- 
munerative pay,  population  increased.   Suddenly,  however, 
free  trade,  in  its  first  approaches,  destroyed  the  trade  in 
kelp ;  and  then  the  reduction  of  the  salt-duties,  and  the 
discovery  of  a  cheap  mode  of  manufacturing  soda  out  of 
common  salt,  secured  its  ruin  beyond  the  power  of  legisla- 
tion to  retrieve.     Both  people  and  landlords  experienced 
in  these,  the  kelp  districts,  the  evils  which  a  ruined  com- 
merce always  leaves  behind  it.      Old   Highland   families 
have  disappeared,  in  consequence,  from  among  the  aristoe- 


THE  HIGHLANDS.  223 

racy  and  landowners  of  the  country ;  and  the  population 
of  extensive  islands  and  seaboards  of  the  country,  from 
being  no  more  than  adequate  to  the  employment  furnished, 
suddenly  became  oppressively  redundant.  It  required, 
however,  another  drop  to  make  the  full  cup  run  over.  The 
potato  is  of  comparatively  modern  introduction  into  the 
Highlands.  We  were  intimate  in  early  life  with  several 
individuals  who  had  seen  potatoes  first  transferred  from 
the  gardens  of  Sutherland  and  Ross  to  the  fields.  But 
during  the  present  century  potatoes  had  become  the  staple 
food  of  the  Highlander.  In  little  more  than  forty  years 
their  culture  had  increased  fivefold ;  for  every  twenty  bolls 
reared  in  1801,  there  were  a  hundred  reared  in  1846 ;  and 
when  in  the  latter  year  the  potato  blight  came  on,  the  poor 
people,  previously  stripped  of  their  little  capitals,  and  di- 
vested of  their  employment,  were  deprived  of  their  food, 
and  ruined  at  a  blow.  The  same  stroke  which  did  little 
more  than  slightly  infringe  on  the  comforts  of  the  people 
of  the  Lowlands,  utterly  prosti-ated  those  of  the  Highlands; 
and  ever  since,  the  sufierings  of  famine  have  become 
chronic  along  the  bleak  shores  and  rugged  islands  of  at 
least  the  northwestern  portion  of  our  country.  Nor  is  it 
perhaps  the  worst  part  of  the  evil  that  takes  the  form  of 
clamorous  want.  Wordsworth,  in  describing  a  time  of 
famine  in  which  the  fields  for  two  years  together  "were 
left  with  half  a  harvest,"  tersely  says,  that 

"  Many  rich 
Sank  down,  as  in  a  dream,  among  the  poor. 
And  of  the  poor  many  did  cease  to  be." 

We  fear  that  during  the  famines  of  the  last  five  years  not  a 
few  of  our  Highland  poor  have  ceased  to  be,  if  not  in  conse- 
quence of  absolute  starvation,  in  consequence  at  least  of  the 
severe  course  of  privation  to  which  they  have  been  exposed. 
But  their  wants  are  now  all  provided  for;  and  it  is  a  more 
disastrous  though  less  obtrusive  fact,  that  so  heavily  has 
the  famine  borne  on  a  class  that  were  not  absolutely  the 


224  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

poor  when  it  came  on,  that  they  are  the  absolutely  poor 
now.  It  has  dissipated  the  last  remains  of  capital  possessed 
by  the  people  of  the  Highlands,  and  placed  them  in  cir- 
cumstances of  prosti'ation  too  extreme  to  leave  them  any 
very  great  chance  of  recovering  themselves,  or  rather  in 
circumstances  from  which,  in  the  present  state  of  the  coun- 
try, recovery  for  them  as  a  people  is  an  impossibility. 

Such  seems  to  be  the  present  state  of  the  Highlands. 
Where  are  we  to  look  for  the  proper  remedies  ?  Alas !  in 
the  body  politic,  as  in  the  natural  body,  injuries  may  be 
easily  dealt,  for  which  it  may  be  scarce  possible  to  suggest 
a  cure.  In  travelling  over  an  extensive  Highland  tract 
last  autumn,  we  had  a  good  deal  of  conversation  with  the 
people  themselves.  Passing  through  wild  districts  of  the 
western  coast,  where  the  rounded  hills  and  scratched  and 
polished  rocks  gave  evidence  that  the  country  had  been 
once  wrapped  up  in  a  winding-sheet  of  ice,  we  saw  the  soil 
for  many  miles  together  —  where  the  bare  rock  had  any 
covering  at  all  —  composed  of  two  almost  equally  hopeless 
ingredients.  The  subsoil  was  formed  of  glacial  debris,  — 
the  mere  scrapings  of  the  barren  primary  rocks ;  and  over 
it  there  lay  a  stratum,  varying  generally  from  six  inches 
to  six  feet,  of  cold,  wet,  inert  moss,  over  which  there  grew 
scarce  even  a  useful  grass,  except  perhaps  the  "  deer's  hair  " 
of  the  sheep-farmer.  And  yet,  on  this  ungenial  soil,  rep- 
resentative of  but  vegetable  and  mineral  death,  —  the 
dead  ice-rubbish  and  the  dead  peat,  —  we  saw  numerous 
cultivated  patches  in  which  the  thin  green  corn  or  sickly- 
looking  potatoes  struggled  with  aquatic  plants,  —  the  com- 
mon reed  and  the  dwarf  water-flag.  No  agriculturist,  with 
all  the  appliances  of  modern  science  at  command,  would 
once  think  of  investing  capital  in  such  a  soil ;  and  yet  here 
were  the  poor  Highlanders  investing  at  least  labor  in  it, 
and  their  modicum  of  seed-corn.  And  we  are  not  to 
wonder  if  the  tillers  of  such  fields  be  miserably  poor,  and 
fail  to  achieve  independence.  There  was  a  locality  pointed 
out  to  U8,  in  a  barren  quartz-rock  district,  in  which  the 


THE  HIGHLANDS.  225 

indestructible  stone,  that  never  resolves  into  soil,  was 
covered  by  a  stratum  of  dark  peat,  where  the  proprietor 
had  experimented  on  the  capabilities  of  the  native  High- 
landere,  by  measuring  out  to  them  amid  the  moor,  at  a  low 
rent,  several  small  farms,  of  ten  or  twelve  acres  apiece. 
But  in  a  moor  composed  of  peat  and  quartz-rock  no  rent 
can  be  low.  No  farmer  thrives  on  a  barren  soil,  let  his  rent 
be  what  it  may ;  and  so  the  speculation  here  had  turned 
out  a  bad  one.  The  quartz-rock  and  the  peat  proved 
pauper-making  deposits;  and  while  the  tenants  paid  their 
rents  irregularly  and  ill,  the  demands  made  on  the  poor- 
rates  by  the  hangers-on  of  the  colony  came  to  be  demanded 
very  regularly  indeed,  and  were  beginning  to  overtop  the 
nominal  rent  in  their  amount.  "  How,"  we  have  frequently 
inquired  of  the  poor  people,  "are  you  spending  your 
strength  on  patches  so  miserably  unproductive  as  these  ? 
You  are  said  to  be  lazy.  For  our  own  part,  what  we  chiefly 
wonder  at  is  your  great  industry.  Were  we  at  least  in 
your  circumstances,  we  would  improve  upon  your  indo- 
lence by  striking  work,  and  not  laboring  at  all."  The 
usual  reply  used  to  be:  "Ah,  there  is  good  land  in  the 
country,  but  they  will  not  give  it  to  us."  And  certainly 
we  did  see  in  the  Highlands  many  tracts  of  kindly-looking 
soil.  Green  margins,  along  the  sides  of  long-withdrawing 
valleys,  which  still  bore  the  marks  of  the  plough,  but  now 
under  natural  grass,  seemed  much  better  fitted  to  be,  as  of 
old,  scenes  of  human  industry,  than  the  cold,  ungenial 
mosses  or  the  barren  moors.  But  in  at  least  nineteen 
cases  out  of  every  twenty  we  found  the  green  patches 
bound  by  lease  to  some  extensive  sheep-farmer,  and  as 
unavailable  for  the  purposes  of  the  present  emergency, 
even  to  the  proprietor,  as  if  they  lay  in  the  United  States 
or  the  Canadas. 

So  far  as  we  could  see,  the  effects  of  recent  emigration 
bad  not  been  favorable.  The  poor-rates  were  heaviest  in 
the  districts  from  which  the  greatest  numbers  had  emi- 
grated.    Unless  emigration  be  so  enforced  as  to  become  a 


226  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

sort  of  indiscriminate  banishment,  —  and  in  these  days  of 
poor-laws  it  would  not  be  easy  to  enforce  it,  even  in  the 
Highlands,  —  it  will  be  the  more  vigorous  and  energetic 
portion  of  the  community  that  will  seek  for  a  home  in 
other  countries,  and  the  feeble  in  mind  and  body  that  will 
be  left  behind.  We  were  much  struck  by  the  casual  state- 
ment in  a  newspaper  paragraph,  that,  of  several  hundred 
emigrants  from  Lewis  who  arrived  in  Canada  this  season, 
there  was  scarce  one  who  was  not  under  thirty.  It  was 
the  elite  of  the  island  that  went,  while  its  pauperism  staid 
behind.  The  pauperism  of  the  Highlands  will  not  willingly 
ci'oss  the  Atlantic;  it  would  be  going  from  home  much 
more  emphatically  than  the  vigorous  emigrant.  There  are 
poor-laws  in  Scotland,  but  none  in  the  backWoods.  But 
on  a  subject  at  once  so  extensive  and  so  difficult  we  can 
do  little  more  than  touch.  We  regretted  to  find,  dunng 
our  late  visit,  that  the  military  spirit  is  at  present  so  dead 
in  the  Highlands  that  the  recruiting  party  of  one  of  the 
most  respectable  Highland  regiments  under  the  Crown 
succeeded  in  enlisting,  during  a  stay  of  several  months, 
only  some  ten  or  twelve  young  men,  in  a  county  charged 
with  an  unemployed  and  sufiering  population.  In  popish 
Ireland  as  many  hundreds  would  have  enrolled  in  the 
time  ;  and  this  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  Irish  has 
crowded  the  British  army  with  a  preponderating  propor- 
tion of  Roman  Catholics,  who,  in  the  event  of  such  a  reli- 
gious war  as  may  one  day  break  out  to  convulse  Europe, 
could  be  but  little  depended  upon  on  the  side  of  Protest- 
antism and  the  Queen.  We  fain  would  see  a  revival  of 
the  old  military  spirit  of  the  Highlands,  both  on  their  own 
account  and  on  that  of  the  country.  The  condition  of  the 
British  army  is  at  the  present  time  one  of  comfort  and 
plenty  compared  with  that  of  the  general  population  of 
the  northwestern  parts  of  Scotland  ;  the  prospect  of  retire- 
ment, with  a  snug  pension,  some  one-and-twenty  years 
hence,  is  a  better  prospect  than  any  poor  Highland  crofter 
or  cottar  can  rationally  entertain  j  and  we  would  much 


THE   SCOTCH  POOR-LAW.  227 

prefer  seeing  some  twenty  thousand  of  our  brave  country- 
men ei>folled  in  the  army,  as  at  once  its  best  soldiers  and 
best  Protestants,  than  lost  forever  to  the  country  in  a  col- 
ony that  in  a  few  years  hence  may  exist  as  one  of  the 
States  of  the  great  North  American  republic. 


IX. 

THE  SOOT  OH  POOR-LAW. 

Wk  have  never  yet  been  able  to  see  any  foundation  for 
the  assertion  of  Paley,  that  "the  poor  have  the  same  right 
to  that  portion  of  a  man's  property  which  the  laws  assign 
to  them,  that  the  man  himself  has  to  the  remainder." 
Right  cannot  be  created  by  law  where  right  did  not  exist 
before;  and  in  the  poor-laws,  as  now  administered  in  Eng- 
land, we  have  a  striking  illustration  of  the  fact.  No  law 
can  give  to  one  man  a  right  to  take  another  man,  guilty  of 
no  crime  save  poverty,  and  in  debt  to  no  one,  and  shut  him 
up  in  pi'ison.  Poverty  is  surely  not  so  grave  an  offence  as 
to  merit  a  punishment  so  severe.  And  yet  certain  it  is, 
that  a  legal  I'ight  of  this  character  exists  in  England  at  the 
present  day.  It  exists  as  surely  as  the  other  legal  right 
asserted  by  Paley ;  nor  does  it  in  the  least  alter  the  state 

1  A  poor-law  edict  indeed  "  become  inevitable  for  Scotland  1 "  But  alas  for 
its  consequences !  One  who  was  session-clerk  for  fourteen  years  in  a  parish  as 
large  as  three  or  four  of  the  smaller  English  counties,  tells  me  that  in  all  those 
years  the  proprietors,  four  in  number,  gave  just  one  five-pounds  in  all  to  assist 
the  poor.  Kow  they  give  about  five  hundred  a  year,  while  the  people  are  taxed 
to  the  amount  of  another  five  hundred.  This  would  be  little  matter,  if  the  con- 
dition of  the  poor  were  improved;  but  it  is  unmistakably  and  undeniably  a  hun- 
dred times  worse.  Is  othing  like  the  thousand  pounds  named  finds  its  way  into  their 
pockets:  collectors,  inspectors,  law  expenses,  etc.,  swallow  up  a  great  part  of  it. 
But,  worse  than  all,  the  kindly  charities  of  the  poor  towards  the  poor  are  qnite 
frozen  up.  Formerly  paupers  were  assisted  with  a  little  milk,  potatoes,  and  fish : 
now  the  industrious  poor,  irritated  by  the  poor-law  tax,  will  contribute  nothing 
towards  the  support  of  their  poorer  neighbors.    The  cry  is,  tio  to  the  Poor's 


228  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

of  the  case  that  the  prison  is  called  a  workbouse.  If  the 
poor,  simply  in  their  character  as  poor,  had  any  such  right 
to  a  portion  of  the  property  of  their  more  fortunate  coun- 
tryfolks as  that  which  their  more  fortunate  countryfolks 
themselves  have  to  the  remainder,  no  legislator,  Scotch  or 
English,  would  dare  clog  that  right  with  so  degrading  a 
condition.  The  laboring  man  has  a  right  to  be  paid  for 
his  labor.  Where  is  the  despot  who  would  venture  to 
alErm,  that,  in  order  to  make  that  right  good,  the  laboring 
man  would  require  to  go  into  prison  ?  His  right  was  made 
good  when  he  completed  the  stipulated  work ;  and  it  is 
the  lack  of  all  such  solid  right  on  the  part  of  the  pauper, 
in  his  character  as  a  pauper,  that  enables  British  legisla- 
tors to  attach  conditions  to  the  fulfilment  of  his  ill-based 
claims,  which  even  Turkish  or  Persian  despots  would  not 
dare  to  attach  to  the  claims  of  the  creditor  who  de- 
manded some  debt  legally  due  to  him.  The  conditions  by 
which  the  legal  right  described  by  Paley  may  be  clogged 
at  pleasure,  demonstrate  that  it  is  not  a  reality,  but  a  fic- 
tion. The  deserving  poor  have,  indeed,  a  claim  upon  their 
wealthier  brethren ;  but  it  is  a  claim  which  human  laws 
cannot  enforce  without  entirely  altering  its  character ;  it  is 
a  claim  which  bears  reference  to  the  divine  law  alone,  and 
to  man's  responsibility  to  his  Maker. 

Let  us  analyze  this  matter :  we  deem  it  one  of  consider- 
able impoitance.    It  seems  to  be  mainly  from  this  want 

Board.  Even  the  sympathies  of  children  towards  their  parents  are  dried  up. 
This  is  universally  spoken  of  as  a  new  and  shocking  phase  of  things.  It  is  not 
uncommon  for  young  people  to  get  married  on  the  very  day  their  parents  go  to  the 
poor-house.  In  towns  the  state  of  matters  is,  if  possible,  worse.  The  assistance 
rendered  by  the  Poor's  Board  becomes  an  absolute  premium  on  vice.  No  hand 
is  stretched  out  towards  the  struggling  poor,  because  character  is  made  of  no 
account;  but  vice  and  improvidence  urge  their  claims  unblushingly,  and  they 
dare  not  be  disregarded.  This  is  very  disheartening  to  well-disposed  individuals 
of  the  better  classes  who  take  an  interest  in  the  condition  of  the  poor:  the  more 
so  that  the  poor  themselves  are  so  well  aware  of  it.  "  Ahl  we  will  get  no  help," 
say  those  who  strive  to  maintain  a  little  outward  decency;  "  but  let  us  first  get 
drunk,  and  then  sell  everything  that  is  left  to  us,  and  then  we  shall  be  sure  of 
it!  "  It  is  easier  to  create  evils  by  unwise  legislation  than  to  cure  them  Nev- 
erthelesS;  some  checks  upon  such  an  unwholesome  state  of  things  ought  to  txa 
devised. 


THE    SCOTCH   POOR-LAW.  229 

of  a  solid  claim  on  the  one  side,  and  this  consequent  right 
of  enforcing  disagreeable  conditions  on  the  other,  that 
compulsory  assessments  have  so  invariably  the  effect  of 
setting  at  variance  the  classes  on  whom  they  are  levied, 
with  the  class  for  whose  support  they  are  made. 

We  resided  and  labored  in  this  part  of  the  country  for 
i  summer  and  autumn  about  eighteen  years  ago,  at  a  time 
when  wages  were  high  and  employment  abundant.  There 
was  much  dissipation  among  the  working  classes  of  the 
period  ;  and  one  of  our  brother  workmen,  Jock  Laidlie, 
was  an  extreme  specimen  of  the  more  dissipated  class. 
Pay  day  came  round  once  a  fortnight,  and  then  we  were 
sure  to  lose  sight  of  Jock  for  about  three  days.  When  he 
came  back  to  resume  his  labor,  he  had  always  a  miserable, 
parboiled  sort  of  look,  as  if  he  had  been  simmering  for 
half  an  hour  in  a  caldron  over  a  slow  fire.  He  was  inva- 
riably, too,  in  that  wretched  state  of  spirits  which  in  those 
days  workmen  used  to  term  "  the  horrors;  "  and  as  men 
can't  get  parboiled  and  into  "  the  horrors  "  for  nothing, 
it  was  found  in  every  instance  that  Jock's  whole  wages 
had  been  dissipated  in  the  process.  And  such,  fortnight 
after  fortnight,  was  the  course  pursued  by  Jock.  Now, 
employment,  though  easily  enough  j)rocured  in  summer 
and  autumn  in  Jock's  profession,  was  always  uncertain  in 
winter,  even  when  the  winter  proved  fine  and  open ;  and 
when  frosts  were  keen  and  prolonged,  and  the  snow  lay 
long  on  the  ground,  there  was  no  employment  for  even  the 
more  fortunate.  It  was  essentially  necessary,  therefore,  in 
the  busier  seasons,  to  make  provisions  for  the  season  in 
which  business  failed.  For  our  own  part,  we  were  desirous, 
we  remember,  to  have  the  winter  all  to  ourselves ;  and 
when  Hallow-day  came  round,  and  employment  failed,  we 
found  oui-selves  in  the  possession  of  twelve  pounds,  which 
we  had  laid  by  just  as  its  price,  if  we  may  so  speak. 
Twelve  pounds  released  us  from  the  necessity  of  laboring 
for  twice  twelve  weeks.  Twelve  jDounds  were  sufficient 
to  purchase  for  us  leisure  and  independence  —  two  very 
20 


230  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

excellent  things — from  the  end  of  October  to  the  begin- 
ning of  May ;  and  we  were  desirous  to  employ  the  time 
thus  fairly  earned  in  cultivating  a  little  inheritance  which, 
in  lesser  or  larger  measure,  descends  to  all,  and  of  which 
no  law  of  appropriation  can  rob  even  working-men,  but 
which,  unless  resolutely  broken  in,  and  sedulously  im- 
proved, must  lie  fallow  and  unproductive,  —  of  no  benefit 
to  the  possessor,  and  useless  to  the  community.  Jock 
Laidlie  had  not  laid  by  a  single  farthing ;  we,  on  a  very 
small  scale,  were  a  capitalist  determined  on  making  an  in- 
vestment. Jock  was  a  pauper;  and  here,  in  a  state  of 
great  simplicity,  in  comes  the  question  at  issue,  —  Had 
Jock  Laidlie  any  right  to  our  twelve  pounds  ? 

To  not  one  copper  farthing  of  it,  say  we.  It  was  all 
our  own,  —  all  honestly  earned  by  the  sweat  of  our  brow. 
We  had  never  claimed  any  right  to  share  with  Jock  in  a 
single  gill ;  we  had  never  tasted  his  whiskey ;  we  had  never 
enjoyed  one  whiff  of  his  tobacco;  we  had  never  meddled 
with  his  earnings ;  he  had  no  right  to  intermeddle  with 
ours.  But  Jock  Laidlie  had  an  aged  mother,  who,  without 
any  fault  on  her  part,  was  miserably  poor,  just  because 
Jock  had  failed  in  his  duty  to  her.  Had  Jock  Laidlie's 
mother  any  right  to  our  twelve  pounds?  No  —  no  right. 
It  might  doubtless  be  a  duty  to  help  the  poor  suffering 
woman  ;  but  her  claim  ujjon  us  was  merely  a  claim  on  our 
compassion.  She  had  no  right  /  nor  had  any  third  party 
a  right  to  thrust  his  hand  into  our  pocket,  and,  out  of  our 
hard-earned  twelve  pounds,  to  assist  Jock  Laidlie's  mother. 

But  if  this  was  the  true  state  of  things  with  regard  to 
the  earnings  of  a  single  summer  and  autumn,  accumulated 
with  an  eye  to  the  coming  winter,  could  there  be  any  new 
>5lement  introduced  simply  by  multiplying  the  summers 
and  autumns  some  thirty  or  forty  times,  and  by  making 
their  accumulated  earnings  bear  reference,  not  to  the  win- 
ter of  the  year,  but  to  the  winter  of  life  ?  Assuredly  not, 
say  we.  The  iTincijile  would  remain  intact  and  unchanged, 
however  largely  the  seasons  or  the  earnings  might  be  mul- 


THE    SCOTCH    POOR-LAW.  231 

tiplifid.  But  suppose,  further,  that  these  earnings  of  forty 
years  were  to  be  invested  in  a  house  or  a  piece  of  land, 
would  not  Jock  Laidlie  or  his  mother  have  some  right  to 
share  in  them  then  ?  Would  not  their  conversion  into  earth 
and  stone,  or -into  stone  and  lime,  derive  a  right  to  Jock  or 
Jock's  mother?  Paley  has  a  very  elaborate  argument  on 
the  subject,  from  which  he  seems  to  arrive  at  the  conclusion 
that  it  would.  "All  things,"  says  this  writer,  "were  orig- 
inally common.  No  one  being  able  to  produce  a  charter 
from  heaven,  had  any  better  title  to  a  particular  possession 
than  his  next  neighbor.  There  were  reasons  for  mankind 
agreeing  upon  a  separation  of  this  common  fund  ;  and  God, 
for  these  reasons,  is  presumed  to  have  ratified  it ;  and  as 
no  fixed  laws  for  the  regulation  of  property  can  be  so  con- 
trived as  to  provide  for  the  relief  of  every  case  and  distress 
which  may  arise,  these  cases  and  distresses,  when  their 
right  and  share  in  the  common  stock  were  given  up  or 
taken  from  them,  were  supposed  to  be  left  to  the  bounty 
of  those  who  might  be  acquainted  with  the  exigencies  of 
their  situation,  and  in  the  way  of  afibrding  assistance. 
And  therefore,  when  the  partition  of  property  is  rigidly 
maintained  against  the  claims  of  indigence  and  distress,  it 
is  maintained  in  opposition  to  the  intention  of  those  who 
made  it,  and  to  His  who  is  the  supreme  proprietor  of 
everything,  and  who  has  filled  the  world  with  plenteous- 
ness  for  the  sustenance  and  comfort  of  all  whom  He  senc^p 
into  it."  Does  not  Jock  Laidlie  or  bis  mother  acquire  a 
claim  to  intromit  with  earnings  transmuted  into  land,  in 
virtue  of  all  this  fine  jshilosophy,  and  this  original  compact 
On  which  it  professes  to  be  founded  ?  No,  not  the  shadow 
of  a  claim.  We  insist,  in  the  first  instance,  upon  Jock 
Laidlie's  producing  proof  of  this  compact.  We  never 
heard  of  it  before.  Paley  tells  us  that  "  when  the  partition 
of  property  is  rigidly  maintained  against  the  claims  of  in- 
digence, it  is  maintained  in  opposition  to  the  intention  of 
those  loJio  made  it.^^  It  is  imperative,  say  we,  that  Paley 
prove  that  intention.     To  what  records  does  he  refer  ? 


232  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

To  what  histories?  "Wherever  man  exists  one  degree 
above  the  savage  state,  there  land  is  appropriated.  It  is 
appropriated  in  China  in  the  far  east,  and  in  America  in 
the  far  west ;  it  is  appropriated  on  towards  the  Antarctic  in 
New  South  Wales,  and  far  to  the  north,  on  the  coasts  of 
Iceland  and  the  White  Sea.  In  some  of  these  countries 
the  appropriation  took  place  no  later  than  yesterday ;  in 
some  of  the  others  it  took  place  fnll  thirty  centuries  ago. 
But  from  which  of  them,  we  marvel,  could  Paley  or  Jock 
Laidlie  prove  the  existence  of  the  compact  ?  Do  the  set- 
tlers in  the  backwoods  take  axe  in  hand,  to  impart  value 
to  their  newly  appropriated  acres  by  a  long  course  of  severe 
labor,  with  the  intention  affirmed  by  the  philosopher?  Do 
they  recognize  a  right  in  the  Jock  Laidlies  of  the  country 
to  intromit  with  their  buckwheat  or  their  Indian  corn 
now?  Or  do  they  yield  to  future  Jock  Laidlies  a  prospect- 
ive right  to  intromit  with  the  buckwheat  or  Indian  corn 
of  their  descendants,  when  all  the  country  shall  have  been 
appropriated  and  cleared  ?  Most  assui-edly  not.  Or  are 
the  evidences  of  any  such  intention  on  the  part  of  our  an- 
cestors embodied  in  the  older  records  of  those  pieces  of 
laud  in  our  own  country  which  we  occasionally  see  in  the 
market  at  an  upset  price  of  from  thirty  to  forty  years'  pui-- 
chase  ?  No,  There  can  be  but  one  answer  to  questions 
such  as  these.  Paley's  compact  is  altogether  a  fiction  ;  and 
a^itizen  of  York  or  of  Bagdad  might  as  well  lay  claim  to 
some  island  of  the  Indian  Ocean  or  the  Pacific,  on  the 
ground  that  his  townsman  Robinson  Crusoe  or  his  towns- 
man Sinbad  the  Sailor  had  once  taken  possession  of  it  in 
behalf  of  the  people  of  York  or  of  Bagdad,  as  the  poor 
lay  claim  to  free  support  on  the  ground  that  such  was  the 
intention  of  the  first  appropriators  of  the  soil.  The  first 
appropriators  of  the  soil  had  no  such  intention. 

The  poor  have  indeed  claims  on  the  compassion  of  men; 
and  these  claims,  when  their  poverty  is  the  result  of  mis- 
fortune, are  very  strong.  God  speaks  in  their  behalf  in  his 
word.      He  speaks  in  their  behalf  in  the  human  heart, 


THE    SCOTCH   POOR-LAW.  2?'* 

which  His  finger  has  made.  When  He  gave  laws  to  IT" 
chosen  people  of  old,  He  forbade  them  to  reap  the  corners 
of  their  fields,  or  to  gather  again  the  loose  ears  which  fell 
from  the  hands  of  their  reapers,  that  the  fatherless  and  the 
stranger  might  pluck  and  eat,  and  that  the  poor  gleaner 
might  not  ply  in  vain  her  tedious  labors.  But  He  gave  to 
the  poor  no  right  in  the  property  of  his  neighbor  which 
the  poor  could  assert  before  the  civil  magistrate.  No  third 
party  was  permitted  to  step  in  and  determine  what  amount 
of  assistance  the  pauper  was  entitled  to  receive  or  the  rich 
necessitated  to  give.  To  himself  alone  did  God  reserve 
the  right  of  being  legislator  and  judge  in  the  case ;  and 
under  his  wise  management  a  genial  charity,  that  softened 
and  improved  the  heai-t,  and  clarified  the  whole  atmosphere 
of  society,  did  not*degenerate  into  an  odious  tax,  redolent 
of  bitter  discontent  and  ill-will ;  the  bowels  of  compassion 
were  not  sealed  up  among  those  whom  he  had  blessed 
with  substance ;  nor  did  the  children  of  poverty  degener- 
ate into  mean  and  ungrateful  paupers.  In  mercy  to  the 
poor,  He  gave  them  no  such  rights  as  those  contended  for 
by  Paley. 

Now,  it  is  this  felt  want  of  right  to  support  on  the  part 
of  the  poor  that  communicates,  as  we  have  said,  to  those 
who  are  compelled  to  support  them,  a  right  of  enforcing 
disasrreeable  conditions,  No  man  has  a  right  in  this  couii- 
try  to  put  another  man  in  prison  simply  because  he  is 
poverty-stricken  and  grows  old.  But  any  man  has  a  right 
to  say  to  any  other  man  who  is  destitute  of  support,  and 
yet  has  no  legitimate  claim  to  be  supported,  Go  into  jsrison, 
and  I  will  support  you  there.  From  the  invariable  ten- 
dency of  a  poor-law  not  only  to  perpetuate  itself,  but  also 
to  increase  mightily  in  weight,  by  adding  to  the  improv- 
idence and  destitution  of  every  country  in  which  it  is 
established,  checks  are  found  necessary  :  from  its  tendency 
to  harden  men's  hearts,  these  checks  are  almost  always  of 
a  barbarous  character  ;  and  hence  the  woi'khouse  check. 
The  law,  as  it  stands  in  England  at  present,  empowers, one 
20* 


284  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

man  to  take  another  man,  guilty,  it  may  be,  of  no  other 
crime  save  poverty,  from  the  wife  with  whom  he  has  jjer- 
chance  lived  in  happiness  for  manyyeare,  and  the  circle  of 
mayhap  an  attached  family,  and  to  shut  him  up  in  a  prison 
under  the  rule  of  a  despotic  jailer,  and  among  the  very 
refuse  of  mankind.  And  what  does  it  give  the  poor  man 
in  return,  as  the  price  of  his  liberty,  and  all  that  he  enjoyed 
from  the  sympathy  and  society  of  a  circle  in  the  round  of 
which  his  attachments  lie  ?  It  gives  him  Paley's  right  of 
the  poor  —  food,  shelter,  and  clothing ;  for  the  two  rights 
—  the  right  of  putting  in  prison  and  the  right  of  being 
suppoi'ted  there  —  have  come  to  be  balanced  against  each 
other.  It  gives  him  miserable  rations  of  the  coarsest  food, 
scanty  in  quantity,  mayhap  unwholesome  in  quality ;  and 
the  share  of  a  truck-bed,  with,  it  may  be,  some  poor  dis- 
eased wretch,  as  loathsome  in  mind  as  in  person,  for  his 
bedfellow.  Such  is  the  character  of  the  English  check. 
Nor  can  we  doubt  that  in  Scotland,  naturally  a  much 
])Oorer  country,  —  a  country,  too,  in  the  possession  of  at 
least  as  hard-hearted  an  aristocracy  as  that  of  the  sister 
kingdom,  and  in  which,  if  once  thoroughly  contaminated 
by  the  influence  of  a  poor-law,  paujjerism  must  increase 
enormously,  —  some  check  at  least  equally  severe  will  come 
to  be  devised.  The  atmosphere  of  the  English  poor-houses 
is  taintinsT  all  Ens'land  with  unwholesome  disaflection  and 
discontent;  it  is  making  bitter  every  where  the  heart  of  the 
poor  man  against  the  middle  classes  and  the  aristocracy  ; 
and,  truly,  no  wonder.  The  poor-law  bastilles  at  the  last 
election  furnished  the  grand  topics  of  Chartist  vituperation 
in  England  against  the  Whigs ;  and  we  are  of  opinion  that 
the  man  requires  to  be  a  sanguine  speculator  indeed  who 
ventures  to  surmise  that  their  introduction  into  Scotland 
will  have  the  effect  of  "  sweetening  the  breath  of  society  " 
there.  The  effect  will  be  directly  the  reverse.  The  en- 
actment of  a  Scottish  poor-law  must  of  necessity  widen 
that  gul^  so  perilously  broad  already,  which  separates  tha 
upper  from  the  lower  classes. 


THE    SCOTCH   POOR-LAW.  235 

There  is  one  misguided  and  very  numerous  class  on 
whom  it  must  be  brought  peculiarly  to  bear,  and  whom  we 
deeply  pity.  We  are,  we  trust,  friendly  to  Chartists, 
though  determinedly  hostile  to  Chartism.  The  principle 
is  ruining  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  our  working- 
men.  It  is  an  ignis  fatuus,  leading  them  astray  in  quest 
of  an  imaginary  and  unrealizable  good,  when,  in  many  cases 
at  least,  some  real  good  lies  full  within  their  reach,  but  of 
the  very  existence  of  which,  blinded  by  the  Chartist  hallu- 
cination, they  have  no  perception.  Scotland  was  always  a 
poor  counti'y,  narrow  in  its  resources,  and  at  times  griev- 
ously oppressed.  It  never  yet  succeeded  in  employing  all 
its  people.  But  in  times  when  religion  was  prized,  and 
education  not  neglected,  the  effects  of  the  pressure  were 
rather  favorable  than  otherwise.  It  thrust  out  on  every 
side  an  intelligent,  energetic,  trustworthy  people,  who  made 
room  for  themselves  everywhere.  Continental  Europe 
knew  them  in  all  its  cities,  —  England,  Ireland,  the  colonies, 
the  whole  world.  Ere  taking  leave  of  their  country,  they 
stood  on  the  elevation  of  the  parish  school  and  the  parish 
church ;  ^nd,  discerning  advantage  at  a  great  distance  over 
the  face  of  the  globe,  they  bent  their  steps  direct  upon  it. 
And  in  virtue  of  the  same  process,  those  who  remained 
behind  were  fitted  for  improving  to  the  utmost  the  resour- 
ces within  their  reach  at  home.  There  are  thousands  of 
Scotchmen  in  the  pi'esent  day,  men  with  the  same  blood 
in  their  veins,  who  are  wasting  their  energies  on  the  five 
points  of  the  Charter,  engaged  in  dreaming  a  disturbed 
and  unhappy  dream  about  unrealizable  political  privileges, 
which,  even  if  attainable,  would  be  useless ;  and  precipitat- 
ing themselves,  meanwhile,  on  the  poor-house.  Let  the 
reader  just  try  to  imagine  a  poor-law  bastille  existing  under 
the  more  stringent  and  repulsive  checks  of  the  system,  and 
filled  with  superannuated  Chartists.  Of  all  writers,  Crabbe 
alone  was  fitted  to  do  justice  to  the  miseries  of  such  a 
prison  so  filled.  It  would  be  truly  "  a  hell  upon  earth." 
Tlie  transition  from  a  state  in  which  aspirations  after  uni- 


236  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

versal  suffrage  are  deemed  of  but  a  lower  and  comparatively 
commonplace  kind,  and  in  which  all  existing  institutions 
are  denounced  as  far  beneath  the  ideal  of  true  liberty  or 
the  standard  of  free-born  men,  to  a  state  compared  with 
which  the  despotism  of  Turkey  or  Morocco  would  be  liberal, 
and  the  degradation  of  ordinary  slavery  not  at  all  subver- 
sive of  the  dignity  of  man's  nature,  could  be  compared  to 
only  those  transitions  described  by  Milton  :  — 

"  When  all  the  damned 
Are  brought  to  feel  by  turns  the  bitter  change 
Of  fierce  extremes,  — extremes  by  change  more  fierce,— 
From  beds  of  raging  fire  to  starve  in  ice." 

But  we  cannot  shut  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  a  poor- 
law  has  become  inevitable  in  Scotland.  Though  unable 
to  recognize  that  right  on  the  part  of  the  poor  for  which 
Paley  contends,  there  exists  a  right  to  legislate  in 
their  behalf  on  the  part  of  the  state  which  we  cannot 
avoid  recognizing.  The  state  has  as  decidedly  a  right  to 
impose  a  tax  in  order  that  a  portion  of  its  subjects  may 
not  be  destroyed  by  starvation,  as  it  has  a  right  to  impose 
a  tax  in  order  that  a  portion  of  its  subjects  may  not  be 
destroyed  by  an  invading  enemy  ;  and  there  are  cases 
in  which  the  enactment  of  a  poor-law  may  be  imper- 
atively a  duty.  In  such  a  state  of  things  as  that  drawn  by 
Goldsmith  in  his  allegory  of  Asem  the  Man-hater,  for  in- 
stance, where,  in  a  country  whose  inhabitants  were  devoid 
of  all  pity,  the  diseased  and  the  aged  were  suffered  to  per- 
ish by  the  wayside,  a  poor-law  would  have  been  the  state's 
only  alternative.  It  would  have  been  as  much  its  duty 
to  interpose  a  tax  between  its  perishing  people  and  de- 
struction in  a  case  of  this  kind,  as  it  would  be  its  duty  to 
levy  a  tax  for  carrying  on  a  war  of  defence  against  a  merci- 
less enemy,  who  was  ravaging  its  territories  with  lire  and 
sword.  Thei'e  is  another  principle  on  which  a  state  may 
well  interfere.    During  the  great  plague  of  Marseilles,  the 


THE   SCOTCH  POOR-iAW.  237 

living,  sunk  in  the  indifference  of  despaii-,  would  no  longer 
bury  their  dead,  and  fifteen  hundred  bodies  lay  rotting  in 
the  sun  outside  the  city  gate,  adding,  by  their  poisonous 
effluvium,  at  once  to  the  horrors  and  the  intensity  of  the 
contagion.  The  magistracy  interfered,  and  compelled  their 
interment ;  and  who  can  doubt  that  the  magistracy  did 
right  in  the  case  ?  Now  it  seems  unquestionable  that, 
among  our  neglected  poor,  diseases  originate  which,  like 
the  effluvium  of  the  dead  at  Marseilles,  spread  infection 
and  death  through  all  classes  of  the  community  ;  and  the 
circumstance  derives  to  the  state  both  a  right  and  a  duty 
in  behalf  of  all  its  people  to  remove,  through  a  provision 
for  the  poor,  the  distress  and  squalor  in  which  the  evil 
originates.  Now,  in  the  present  state  of  Scotland  we  rec- 
ognize an  urgent  necessity,  on  both  these  principles,  for 
state  interference  in  behalf  of  the  poor.  They  are  perish- 
ing for  lack  of  bread  ;  they  are  spreading  deadly  contagion 
through  our  lanes  and  alleys ;  the  system  of  compulsory 
support  is  a  coarse,  inadequate  system  ;  it  will  have  by 
and  by  to  be  connected  with  some  repulsive  check,  in 
order  that  the  capital  and  industry  of  the  country  may  not 
be  swallowed  up  by  its  lean  and  blighted  poverty.  But, 
however  coarse,  however  inadequate,  however  productive 
it  may  prove  of  fierce  discontent  or  miserable  degi'adation, 
it  is  the  only  system  in  the  field  at  present.  A  poor-law, 
we  repeat,  has  become  inevitable  in  Scotland.  The  con- 
troversy between  contending  systems  exists  among  us  no 
longer.  Dr.  Alison  still  occupies  his  ground; 'Dr.  Chal- 
mers has  withdrawn. 

Truly,  it  is  enough  to  make  one's  heart  swell  to  think 
how  the  gigantic  exertions  of  this  great  and  good  man  in 
behalf  of  his  country  have  been  met  in  this  cause.  Were 
we  to  say  that  the  poor  of  Scotland  are  on  the  eve  of  per- 
ishing in  utter  degradation,  from  a  lack  of  faith  in  the  effi- 
cacy of  the  gospel  of  Christ  on  the  part  of  our  influential 
classes,  the  remark  would  no  doubt  be  deemfed  over  ex- 
treme and  severe ;  and  it  would  be  a  remark  open,  doubt- 


238  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

less,  to  objection,  —  not,  however,  from  its  severity,  but 
from  its  tame  and  inexpressive  inadequacy.  It  is  the  con- 
demnation of  the  class  most  influential  in  directing  the 
destinies  of  our  country,  not  that,  in  the  indifferency  of 
unbelief,  they  have  stood  aloof  and  done  nothing,  but  that 
they  have  risen  in  maniac  hostility,  and  overpowered  those 
who  were  straining  all  their  energies  in  their  behalf.  Not 
since  the  days  of  Knox  did  any  venerable  Either  of  the 
Church  of  Scotland  so  exert  himself  in  bringing  Christian- 
ity to  the  people  by  the  erection  of  congregations  and  the 
planting  of  churches,  as  Dr.  Chalmers  has  done.  Never 
has  merchant  so  travailed  to  till  his  coffers,  or  statesman 
so  labored  to  consolidate  his  power,  as  this  man  has  trav- 
ailed and  labored,  in  season  and  out  of  season,  to  bring  the 
blessings  of  the  gospel  to  the  poor,  the  degraded,  and  the 
forgotten.  In  ten  years  the  Church  of  Scotland  saw  two 
hundred  places  of  worship  added  to  her  communion.  And 
how  have  these  bis  weapons  —  forged  to  bear  down  the 
crime  and  ignorance,  and,  with  these,  the  poverty  of  the 
countiy  —  been  dealt  with?  Let  our  law-courts  tell,  in 
the  first  instance ;  let  our  aristocrats  who  stand  by  applaud- 
ing their  decisions,  declare  in  the  second.  Who  was  it 
that,  when  the  state  and  the  aristocracy  of  the  country 
refused  to  endow  his  churches,  and  when  the  industrious 
and  religious  poor  came  forward  for  the  purpose  with  their 
cojipcrs,  widows  with  their  mites,  and  toil-worn  laborers 
and  mechanics  with  pittances  subtracted  from  their  scanty 
wages, —  who  was  it  that  made  prize  of  their  humble  offer- 
ings, and  confiscated  them,  on  behalf  of  the  pauperism  of 
the  country,  forsooth  ?  There  was  an  irony  in  the  pretext 
which  those  who  employed  it  could  not  have  fully  under- 
stood at  the  time,  but  which  they  will  come  to  appreciate 
by  and  by.  And  who,  through  the  Stewarton  and  Auch- 
terarder  decisions,  have  fully  completed  what  the  Brechin 
decision  began?  Truly,  the  parties  who  had  most  at 
stake  in  the  exertions  of  the  champion  who  took  the  field 
in  theii"  behalf  have  been  wonderfully  successful  in  disarm- 


THE    SCOTCH   POOR-LAW.  239 

ing  and  forcing  him  aside ;  and  all  that  is  necessary  for 
them  now  is,  just  to  be  equally  successful  in  grappling  with 
the  o'ermastering  and  enormous  evils  which  he  set  himself 
BO  determinedly  to  oppose.  We  trust,  however,  that  they 
will  no  longer  attempt  deceiving  the  country,  by  speaking 
of  a  moral  force  as  a  thing  still  in  the  field,  in  opposition 
to  the  merely  pecuniary  force  recommended  by  Dr.  Alison. 
The  moral  force  is  in  the  field  no  longer  ;  Dr.  Alison 
stands  alone. 

For  the  present,  however,  we  must  conclude.  Very  im- 
portant questions  of  morals  are  on  the  eve  of  becoming 
questions  of  arithmetic  in  Scotland;  and  the  wealth  of  the 
country,  though  it  may  find  the  exercise  a  reducing  one, 
will  be  quite  able  to  sum  them  up  in  their  new  character. 
Let  us  just  touch  one  two  of  them  by  way  of  specimen. 
We  have  adverted  oftener  than  once  to  the  evils  of  the 
bothy  system.  They  are  going  to  take  the  form  of  a 
weighty  assessment ;  and  our  proprietary  may  be  induced 
to  inquire  into  them  in  consequence.  There  is  another 
great  evil  to  which  we  have  not  referred  so  directly.  All 
our  readers  must  have  heard  of  vast  improvements  which 
have  taken  place  during  the  present  century  in  the  northern 
Highlands.  The  old  small  farm,  semi-pastoral,  semi-agii- 
cultural  system  was  broken  up,  the  large  sheepfarm  system 
introduced  in  its  place,  and  the  inland  population  of  the 
country  shaken  down,  not  without  violence,  to  the  skirts 
of  the  land,  there  to  commence  a  new  mode  of  life  as  la- 
borers and  fishermen.  And  all  this  was  called  improve- 
ment. It  was  called  great  improvement  not  many  years 
since,  in  most  respectable  English,  in  the  pages  of  the 
"  Quarterly  Review."  And  we  heard  a  voice  raised  in  re- 
ply. It  was  the  scrannel  voice  of  meagre  famine  from  the 
shores  of  the  northern  Highlands,  prolonged  into  a  yell  of 
suffering  and  despair.  But,  write  as  you  may,  apologists 
of  the  system,  you  have  ruined  the  country,  and  the  fact  is 
on  the  eve  of  being  stated  in  figures.  The  poor-law  assess- 
ment will  find  you  out. 


240  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 


X. 

PAUPE^SM. 

The  utterly  miserable  are  always  unsafe  neighbors.  In 
formerdays,  when  a  barbarous  jurisprudence,  with  its  savage 
disregard  of  human  life,  extended  to  our  prisons,  and  every 
place  of  confinement  in  the  kingdom  was  a  stagnant  den 
of  filth  and  wretchedness,  the  contagious  disease  originated 
in  these  receptacles  of  horror  and  suffering,  and  which 
from  this  circumstance  bore  the  name  of  the  jail-distemper, 
frequently  burst  out  on  the  inhabitants  of  the  surrounding 
town  or  village,  and  carried  them  off  by  hundreds  at  a  time. 
It  is  recoraeu,  ^hat,  after  a  criminal  court  had  been  held  on 
one  occasion,  in  the  reign  of  James  VI.,  at  which  the  cele- 
bi'ated  Lord  Bacon  took  some  official  part,  a  malignant 
fever  broke  out  among  the  persons  who  had  attended, 
which  terminated  fatally  in  the  case  of  several  of  the  jury 
and  of  some  of  the  gentlemen  of  the  bar,  and  that  the 
philosophic  Chancellor  expi'essed  his  conviction  that  the 
contagion  had  been  carried  into  the  court-room  by  a  posse 
of  wretched  felons  from  the  tainted  atmosphere  of  their 
dungeon.  Self-preservation  in  these  cases  enforced  the 
dictates  of  humanity :  the  same  all-powerful  principle 
enforces  them  still.  It  is  more  than  probable  that  the 
misery  of  the  neglected  classes  occasionally  breaks  out 
upon  that  portion  of  our  population  which  occupies  the 
upper  walks  in  society,  in  the  form  of  contagious  disease, 
—  in  the  form  of  typhus  fever,  for  instance  :  there  can  be 
no  doubt  whatever  that  it  often  breaks  out  upon  them  in 
the  form  of  crime. 

But  where  is  the  true  remedy  to  be  found  ?    It  was  com- 
paratively an  easy  matter  to  ventilate  our  prisons,  and  to 


PAUPERISM.  241 

introduce  into  them  the  various  improvements  recom- 
raeuded  alike  by  the  dictates  of  humanity  and  prudence. 
But  how  are  the  suffering  masses  to  be  ventilated,  and 
their  condition  permanently  improved  ?  It  does  not  do  to 
grope  in  the  dark  in  such  matters.  It  is  well,  surely  to 
meet  with  the  evil  in  its  effects  when  it  has  become  utter 
misery  and  destitution,  and  to  employ  every  possible  means 
for  relieving  its  victims.  It  is  infinitely  better,  however, 
to  meet  with  it  in  its  causes,  —  to  meet  with  it  in  the 
forming,  and  to  check  it  there.  It  was  not  by  baling  back 
the  waters  of  the  river  that  Cyrus  laid  bare  the  bed  of  the 
Euphrates ;  it  was  by  cutting  off  the  supply.  Where  are 
the  sources  of  this  fearfully  accumulated  and  still  accu- 
mulating misery  to  be  found  ?  At  what  particular  point, 
or  in  what  particular  manner,  should  the  enlightened  ben- 
efactor of  the  suffering  classes  interfere  to  cut  off  the  sup- 
ply ?  The  reader  anticipates  a  truism,  —  one  of  those 
important  and  unquestioned  truths  which,  according  to 
Goethe,  seem  divested  of  their  proper  effect,  as  important 
just  from  the  circumstance  of  their  being  unquestioned,  and 
which,  gliding  inefficiently  along  the  stream  of  universal 
assentation,  are  allowed  to  weigh  less  with  the  public  mind 
than  the  short-lived  and  unfruitful  paradoxes  of  the  pass- 
ing time.  Instead,  however,  of  laying  down  a  principle, 
we  shall  simply  state  a  few  facts  of  a  kind  which  many  of 
our  humbler  readers  —  the  "  men  of  handicraft  and  hard 
labor  "  —  will  be  able  fully  to  verify  from  their  own  expe- 
rience, and  that  embody  the  principle  which  seems  to  bear 
most  directly  on  the  subject. 

We  passed  part  of  two  years  in  the  neighboi-hood  of 
Edinburgh  immediately  before  the  great  crisis  of  1825,  and 
knew  perhaps  more  about  the  working  classes  of  the  place 
than  can  well  be  known  by  men  who  do  not  live  on  their 
own  level.  The  speculations  of  the  time  had  given  an 
impulse  to  the  trading  world.  Employment  was  abundant, 
and  wages  high  ;  and  we  had  a  full  opportunity  of  seeing 
in  what  degree  the  mere  commercial  and  trading  prospcr- 
21 


242  POLITICAL   AKD    SOCIAL. 

ity  of  a  country  —  the  mere  money-welfare  which  men 
such  as  Joseph  Hume  can  appreciate  —  is  truly  beneticial 
to  the  laboring  portion  of  the  community.  We  shall  pick 
out,  by  way  of  specimen,  the  case  of  a  single  party  of 
about  twenty  workmen,  engaged  at  from  twenty-four  to 
twenty-seven  shillings  per  week,  most  of  them  young,  un- 
married men,  in  the  vigor  of  early  manhood.  Remember 
we  are  drawing  no  fancy  sketch.  Fully  two  thirds  of  that 
number  were  irreligious,  and  in  a  greater  or  less  degree 
dissipated.  They  were  paid  by  their  employer  regularly 
once  a  fortnight,  on  the  evening  of  Saturday ;  and  imme- 
diately as  they  had  pocketed  their  wages,  a  certain  num- 
ber of  them  disappeared.  On  the  morning  of  the  following 
Wednesday,  but  rarely  sooner,  they  returned  again  to  their 
labors,  worn  out  and  haggard  with  the  excesses  of  three 
days  grossly  spent,  and  without  a  single  shilling  of  the 
money  which  they  had  earned  during  the  previous  fort- 
night. And  such  was  the  regular  round  with  these  unfor 
tunate  men,  until  the  crisis  arrived,  and  they  were  thrown 
out  of  employment  in  a  state  of  as  utter  poverty  as  if  they 
had  never  been  employed  at  all. 

There  was  a  poor  laborer  attached,  with  a  few  others,  to 
the  party  we  describe,  whose  wages  amounted  to  about 
half  the  hire  of  one  of  the  mechanics.  His  earnings  at 
most  did  not  exceed  fourteen  shillings  per  week.  This 
laborer  supported  his  aged  mother.  On  Sundays  he  was 
invariably  dressed  in  a  neat,  clean  suit;  he  occasionally  in- 
dulged, too,  in  the  purchase  of  a  good  book;  and  we  have 
sometimes  seen  him  slip,  unnoticed  as  he  thought,  a  few 
coppers  into  the  hands  of  a  poor  beggar.  And  yet  this 
man  saved  a  little  money.  We  lived  nine  months  under 
the  same  roof  with  him ;  and  as  we  were  honored  with 
his  confidence  and  his  friendship,  we  had  opportunities  of 
seeing  the  character  in  its  undress.  Never  have  we  met 
with  a  man  more  thoroughly  a  Christian,  or  a  man  who 
felt  more  continually  that  he  was  living  in  the  presence  of 
Deity.     Now,  in  the  ordinary  course  of  events,  .and  debar* 


PAUPERISM.  243 

ring  the  agency  of  accident,  it  is  well-nigh  as  impossible 
that  men  such  as  this  laborer  can  sink  into  pauperism,  as 
•^hat  men  of  the  opposite  stamp  can  avoid  sinking  into  it. 
The  dissipated  mechanics,  with  youth  and  strength  on 
iheir  side,  and  with  their  earnings  of  twenty-four  and 
twenty-seven  shillings  per  week,  were  yet  paupers  in  em- 
bryo. It  is  according  to  the  inevitable  constitution  of 
society,  too,  that  vigorous  working-men  should  have  rela- 
tives dependent  upon  them  for  sustenance,  —  aged  parents 
or  unmarried  sisters,  or,  when  they  have  entered  into  the 
marriage  relation,  wives  and  families.  And  hence  the 
mighty  accumulation  of  pauperism  when  the  natural  prop 
fails  in  yielding  its  proper  support. 

We  have  another  fact  to  state  regarding  our  old  acquaint- 
ances, which  is  not  without  its  importance,  and  in  which, 
we  are  convinced,  the  experience  of  all  our  humbler  readers 
will  bear  us  out.  Some  of  the  most  skilful  mechanics  of 
the  party,  and  some,  too,  of  the  most  intelligent,  were 
among  the  most  dissipated.  One  of  the  number,  a  power- 
ful-minded man,  full  of  information,  was  a  great  reader ; 
there  was  another,  possessed  of  an  intellect  more  than 
commonly  acute,  who  had  a  turn  for  composition.  The 
first,  when  thrown  out  of  employment,  and  on  the  extreme 
verge  of  starvation,  enlisted  into  a  regiment  destined  for 
Bome  of  the  colonies,  whence  he  never  returned  ;  the  other 
broke  down  in  constitution,  and  died,  before  his  fortieth 
year,  of  old  age.  What  is  the  proper  inference  here  ? 
Mere  intellectual  education  is  not  enough  to  enable  men 
to  live  well,  either  in  the  upper  or  lower  walks  of  society, 
and  especially  in  the  latter.  The  moral  nature  must  also 
be  educated.  Was  Robert  Burns  an  ignorant  or  unintelli- 
gent man  ?  or  yet  Robert  Ferguson  ? 

Facts  such  as  these  —  and  their  amount  is  altogether 
incalculable  —  indicate  the  point  at  which  the  sources  of 
pauperism  can  alone  be  cut  off.  The  disease  must  be  antici- 
pated ;  for  when  it  has  passed  to  its  last  stage,  and  actually 
become  pauperism^  there  is  no  remedy.    Every  effort  which 


244  POLITICAL    AIs'I*   SOCIAL.' 

an  active  but  blind  humanity  can  suggest  in  such  desperate 
circumstances  is  but  a  baling  back  of  the  river  when  |,he 
floods  are  rising.  If  there  be  a  course  of  moral  and  reli- 
gious culture  to  which  God  himself  sets  his  seal,  and 
through  which  even  the  dissipated  can  be  reclaimed,  and 
the  uncontaminated  preserved  from  contamination,  —  a 
course  through  which,  by  the  promised  influences  of  a 
divine  agent,  characters  such  as  that  of  our  friend  the  poor 
laborer  can  be  formed,  —  that  course  of  moral  and  religious 
culture  is  the  only  remedy.  The  pauperism  of  Scotland, 
in  its  present  deplorable  extent,  is  comparatively  new  to 
the  country ;  and  certain  it  is,  that  in  the  last  age  the 
spirit  of  anti-pauperism  and  of  anti-patronage  were  insep- 
arable among  the  Presbyterian  people.  Thei-e  is  a  close 
connection  between  the  non-intrusion  principle  and  the 
formation  of  characters  such  as  that  of  our  friend  the  la- 
borer. What  were  the  religious  sentiments  of  the  class, 
happily  not  yet  forgotten  in  our  country,  who  bore  up  in 
their  honest  and  independent  poverty,  relying  for  support 
on  the  promise  of  their  Heavenly  Father,  but  who  asked 
not  the  help  of  man,  and  who,  in  so  many  instances,  would 
not  receive  it  even  when  it  was  extended  to  them  ?  To 
what  party  in  the  church  did  the  poor  widows  belong 
who  refused  the  proffered  aid  of  the  parish,  —  if  they  had 
children,  lest  it  should  be  "  cast  up  "  to  them  in  after-life, 
—  if  they  had  none,  "  because  they  had  come  of  honest 
people  ?  "  Much  of  what  was  excellent  in  the  Scottish 
character  in  the  highest  degree  arose  directly  out  of  the 
Scottish  Church  in  its  evangelical  integrity ;  much,  too,  of 
what  was  excellent  in  the  main,  though  perhaps  somowhat 
dashed  with  eccentricity,  arose  out  of  what  we  may  term 
the  church's  reflex  influences. 


PAUPER  LABOR.  2^^ 


XI. 

PAUPER  LABOR. 

W^E  hold  that  the  only  righteous  and  practical  check  on 
,v\ult  pauperism,  the  only  check  at  once  just  and  efficient, 
ts  the  compulsory  imposition  of  labor  on  every  pauper  to 
whom  God  has  given,  in  even  the  slightest  degree,  the 
laboring  ability.  One  grand  cause  of  the  inefficiency  of 
workhouses  arises  mainly  from  the  circumstance  that  their 
names  do  not  indicate  their  character.  The  term  work- 
bouse  has  become  a  misnomer,  seeing  that  it  designates 
buildings  in  which,  for  any  one  useful  purpose,  no  work  is 
done.  We  say  for  any  useful  purpose;  for  in  some  cases 
there  is  work  done  in  them  which  is  of  a  most  mischievous, 
pauper-producmg  kind.  They  enter,  in  the  character  of 
competitors,  into  that  field  of  unskilled,  or  at  least  very 
partially  skilled  labor,  which  is  chiefly  occupied  by  the 
self-sustaining  c/asses  that  stand  most  directly  on  the  verge 
of  pauperism;  and  their  hapless  rivals,  backed  by  no  such 
bounty  as  that  upon  which  they  trade,  sink  in  the  ill- 
omened  contest,  and  take  refuge  within  their  walls,  to 
assist  in  carrying  on  tnat  war  against  honest  industry  in 
which  they  themselves  nave  gone  down.  Folly  of  this 
extreme  character  in  the  management  of  the  pauperism  of 
the  country  admits  of  no  apology,  from  the  circumstance 
that  it  is  as  palpable  as  it  is  mischievous.  The  legitimate 
employment  of  the  inmates  of  a  workhouse  we  find  unmis- 
takably indicated  by  the  nature  of  their  wants.  What  is 
it  that  constitutes  their  pauperism  ?  Nature  has  given 
them  certain  wants,  which,  from  some  defect  either  in 
character  or  person,  they  themselves  fail  to  supply;  they 
lack  food  and  they  lack  raiment;  and  these  two  wants 
21* 


246  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

comprise  the  wants  of  a  poorbouse.  Then  let  the  direct 
supply  of  these  wants  be  the  work  of  a  poorbouse,  —  its 
direct,  not  its  circuitous  work,  —  not  its  work  in  the  com- 
petition market,  to  the  inevitable  creation  of  more  paupers, 
but  its  work  in  immediate  connection  with  the  soil,  out 
of  which  all  food  and  all  raiment  are  produced,  and  with 
the  wants  of  its  own  inmates.  The  organization  of  labor 
in  society  at  large  we  regard  as  an  inexecutable  vision.  In 
even  the  most  despotic  nations  of  Europe  that  compulsory 
power  is  wanting  which  must  constitute  —  man  being  what 
he  is — the  moving  force  of  organized  labor;  but  within 
the  precincts  of  a  workhouse  the  compulsory  power  does 
exist ;  and  there,  in  consequence,  the  organization  of  labor 
is  no  inexecutable  vision,  but  a  sober  possibility.  It  would 
impart  to  our  workhouses  their  proper  character,  by  not  only 
furnishing  them  with  an  efficient  labor  check,  and  convert- 
ing them  into  institutions  of  discipline,  in  which  the  useless 
member  of  society,  that  could  but  would  not  work,  would 
be  compelled  to  exert  himself  in  his  own  behalf;  but  it 
would  also  convert  them  into  institutions  in  which  a  nu- 
merous pauper  class,  of  rather  better  character,  —  too  in- 
efficient, either  from  lack  of  energy  or  of  skill,  to  provide 
for  themselves,  amid  that  pressure  and  bustle  of  competition 
which  obtains  in  society  at  large,  —  might,  by  being  shielded 
from  competition,  and  brought  into  immediate  contact  with 
the  staple  of  their  wants,  become  self-supporting.  All  that 
would  be  necessary  in  any  poorbouse  would  be  simply 
this,  —  that  its  class  of  raiment-producers  should  produce 
clothes  enough  for  both  themselves  and  its  sustenance- 
producers;  and  that  its  sustenance-producers  should,  in 
turn,  produce  food  enough  for  both  themselves  and  its 
raiment-producers.  And,  brought  fairly  into  contact  with 
the  soil  and  its  productions  in  the  raw  state,  —  with  their 
wants  reduced  to  the  simple  natural  level,  the  profits  of 
the  trader  superseded,  the  pressure  of  taxation  removed, 
the  enormous  expenses  of  the  dram-shop  cut  off  by  that 
law  of  compulsory  temperance  which  the  lack  of  a  com- 


PAUPER   LABOR.  247 

mnnd  of  money  imposes,  —  we  have  little  fear  but  that 
many  of  those  institutions  would  become  self-supporting, 
or  at  least  very  nearly  so.  The  country  would  still  have 
to  bear  some  of  the  expense  of  what  has  been  well  termed 
its  heaven-ordained  poor,  —  the  halt,  the  maimed,  and  the 
fatuous ;  but  be  it  remembered  that  these  always  bear  a 
definite  proportion  to  the  population ;  and  that  the  present 
alarming  increase  in  the  country's  pauperism  is  not  a  con- 
sequence of  any  disproportionate  increase  in  that  modicum 
of  its  amount  which  the  heaven-ordained  poor  composes. 
So  much  for  the  country's  adult  pauperism.  With  regard 
to  its  juvenile  pauperism,  the  labor  scheme  is  more  impor- 
tant still.  The  country  has  many  poor  children  living  at 
its  expense  in  workhouses,  or  boarded  in  humble  cottages 
in  the  country ;  and  there  are  many  more  that  either  want 
parents,  or  worse  than  want  them,  that  are  prowling  about 
its  larger  towns,  and  scraping  up  a  miserable  livelihood  by 
begging  or  theft.  Unless  in  the  season  of  youth  —  ere  the 
mind  becomes  rigid  under  the  influence  of  habit,  and  takes 
the  set  which  it  is  to  bear  through  life  —  these  juvenile 
paupers  and  vagabonds  be  converted  into  self-sustaining, 
honest  members  of  society,  they  will  inevitably  become 
the  adult  paupers  or  criminals  of  the  future,  and  the  country 
will  have  to  support  them  either  in  poorhouses  or  penal 
settlements,  or,  worse  still,  to  pay  executioners  for  hanging 
them.  Of  all  non-theological  things,  labor  is  the  most 
sacred ;  of  all  non-ethical  things,  labor  is  the  most  moral. 
The  working  habit  —  the  mere  homely  ability  of  laboring 
fairly  and  honestly  for  one's  bread  —  is  of  more  value  to  a 
country,  when  diffused  among  its  people,  than  all  the  other 
gifts  —  be  they  hills  of  gold  or  rocks  of  diamonds  —  that 
can  possibly  fall  to  its  share.  And  if  its  people,  or  any 
very  considerable  pai't  of  them,  possess  not  that  habit  and 
ability,  it  matters  not  what  else  it  may  possess :  there  is 
an  element  of  weakness  in  its  constitution  for  which  no 
amount  of  even  right  principle  among  them  will  ever  form 
an  adequate  compensation.    There  is,  we  believe,  no  part 


248  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

of  her  Majesty's  dominions  in  which  there  is  more  right 
principle  than  in  the  Highlands  of  Scotland ;  but,  from 
causes  which  it  might  be  a  mournful,  but  certainly  no  un- 
instructive  task  to  trace,  their  people  possess  the  working 
habit  and  ability  in  a  comparatively  small  degree ;  and  so 
they  can  do  exceedingly  little  for  this  propagation  of  the 
principles  which  they  hold,  and,  when  disease  touches  the 
root  of  the  potato,  they  find  themselves  in  circumstances 
in  which,  save  for  the  charity  of  their  neighbors,  they  would 
perish.  Principle,  even  when  held  truly  and  in  sincerity, 
as  among  many  of  our  poor  Highlanders,  is  not  enough  of 
itself;  and  the  mere  teaching  of  principle  in  early  life,  in 
lessons  which  may  or  may  not  be  received  efficiently  and 
in  truth,  must  of  itself  be  still  less  sufiicient.  Even  if  the 
best  churches  in  the  country  had  the  country's  vagabond 
and  pauper  children  subject  to  their  instruction,  —  sup- 
posing the  thing  possible,  though,  of  course,  if  the  churches 
did  not  feed  them,  it  is  not ;  and  supposing,  further,  that 
they  turned  them  out  on  society,  the  couree  completed, 
destitute  of  industrial  habits  or  skill,  —  what  would  be  the 
infallible  result  ?  The  few  converted  to  God  by  a  vital 
change  of  heart,  —  and  in  all  ages  of  the  church  the  num- 
bers of  such  have  been  proportionably  few,  —  would  no 
doubt  either  struggle  on  blamelessly  through  life,  or,  sink- 
ing in  the  hard  contest,  would  resign  life  rather  than 
sustain  it  by  the  fruits  of  a  course  of  crime  ;  but  the  great 
bulk  of  the  others  would  live  as  paupers  or  criminals:  they 
would  be  simply  better  instructed  vagabonds  than  if  they 
had  been  worse  taught.  The  welfare  of  a  country  has  two 
foundations.  Right  principle  is  the  one;  and  the  other, 
and  scarce  less  important  foundation,  is  industrial  habit 
combined  with  useful  skill.  And  in  order  to  obviate  the 
great  danger  of  permitting  juvenile  paupers  to  grow  up 
into  adult  paupers  and  criminals,  it  is  essentially  necessary 
that  the  skill  should  be  communicated  to  them,  and  the 
habits  formed  in  them.  And  hence  the  impoi-tance  of  the 
scheme  that,  by  finding  regular  employment  for  the  youth- 


PAUPER  LABOR.  249 

ful  paupers  of  the  country,  would  rear  thera  up  in  honest, 
industrial  habits,  and  thias  qualify  thera  for  being  useful 
members  of  society. 

It  has  been  alleged  against  Presbyterianisra  by  excellent 
men  of  the  English  Church,  — among  the  rest  by  Thomas 
Scott  the  commentator,  —  that  in  its  history  in  the  past  it 
has  been  by  much  too  political,  and  has  busied  itself  too  en- 
grossingly  with  national  affairs.  There  can  be  little  doubt 
that  its  history  during  the  seventeenth  and  the  latter  half 
of  the  sixteenth  century  is  very  much  that  of  Scotland. 
Presbyterianisra  was  political  in  those  days,  and  fought 
the  battles  of  civil  as  certainly  as  those  of  religious  liberty. 
During  a  considerable  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  it 
was  not  political.  Frora  the  suppression  of  the  Rebellion 
of  1745  to  the  breaking  out  of  the  great  revolutionary 
war,  the  life  led  by  the  Scottish  people  was  an  exceedingly 
quiet  one,  and  there  were  no  exigencies  in  their  circum- 
stances important  enough  to  make  large  demands  on  the 
exertions  of  the  patriot  or  the  ingenuity  of  the  political 
economist.  The  people  of  the  empire  rather  fell  short 
than  exceeded  its  resources,  and  were  somewhat  less  than 
sufficient  to  carry  on  its  operations  of  agriculture  and 
trade ;  and  hence  the  comfortable  doctrine  of  Goldsmith 
and  Smollett  regarding  population,  —  a  comfortable  doc- 
trine, for  it  never  can  obtain  save  when  a  nation  is*  in 
comfortable  circumstances.  The  best  proof  of  the  welfare 
of  a  country,  they  said,  was  the  greatness  of  its  population. 
It  was  unnecessary  in  such  an  age  that  Presbyterianisra 
should  be  political.  The  pauperism  which  had  deluged 
Scotland  immediately  after  the  Revolution  had  been  all 
absorbed  ;  the  people,  in  at  least  the  Lowlands,  were  a 
people  of  good  working  habits;  and  in  the  Highlands  little 
work  served  ;  and  all  that  had  to  be  done  by  such  of  the 
ministers  of  religion  in  the  country  as  were  worthy  of  the 
name  was  to  exert  themselves  in  adding  right  principle 
and  belief  in  relation  to  the  realities  of  the  unseen  world, 
to  the  right  habits  in  relation  to  the  present  one  that  had 


260  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

already  been  formed  among  the  people  of  their  charges. 
But  with  the  revolutionary  war  and  the  present  century 
the  state  of  matters  greatly  altered.  Pauperism  began 
mightily  to  increase  ;  the  recesses  of  our  large  towns,  that 
some  forty  or  fifty  yeans  before  used  to  pour  out  to  the 
churches,  at  the  sound  of  the  Sabbath  bells,  a  moral  and 
religious  poj^ulation,  became  the  foul  dens  in  which  a  worse 
than  heathen  canaille  festered  in  poverty  and  ignorance  ; 
habits  of  intemperance  had  increased  twenty-fold  among 
the  masses ;  the  young  were  growing  up  by  thousands  in 
habits  of  idleness  and  crime  to  contaminate  the  future  ; 
even  the  better  people,  placed  with  their  children  in  peril- 
ous juxtaposition  with  the  thoroughly  vitiated,  were  in  the 
circumstances  of  men  in  health  located  per  force  in  the 
fever-ward  of  a  hospital.  The  Scottish  Highlanders,  too, 
ruined  by  the  clearing  system,  had  come  to  be  in  circum- 
stances greatly  different  from  those  of  their  fathers ;  and 
it  had  grown  once  more  necessary  that  the  Presbyterian 
minister  should,  like  his  predecessors  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, interest  himself  in  a  class  of  secular  questions  that 
are  shown  by  experience  to  be  as  clearly  allied  to  spiritual 
ones  as  the  body  is  to  the  soul.  The  one  great  name 
specially  connected  with  this  altered  state  of  things,  and 
the  course  of  action  which  it  demands,  is  that  of  Chalmers, 
—  Chalmers,  the  true  type  and  exemplar  of  tlie  Presbyte- 
rian minister  as  specially  suited  to  the  exigencies  of  the 
time.  But  there  are  other  names.  The  late  Dr.  Duncan 
with  his  savings  banks,  Guthrie  with  his  ragged  schools, 
Begg  and  Mackenzie  with  their  dwellings  for  the  working 
classes,  Tasker  in  his  West  Port  laboi-ing  in  the  footsteps 
of  his  friend  the  great  deceased,  must  be  regarded  as  true 
successors  of  those  Presbyterian  ministers  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  who  identified  themselves  with  their  people 
in  all  their  interests,  and  were  as  certainly  good  patriots  as 
sound  divines.  And  there  are  signs  in  the  horizon  that 
their  example  is  to  become  general.  We  have  scarce  met 
a  single  Highland  minister  for  the  last  three  or  four  yeaTS, 


PAUPER  LABOR.  251 

\  —  especially  those  of  the  northwestern  Highlands,  —  who 
Xtd  not  ask,  however  hopeless  of  an  answer,  "  What  is 
to  be  done  witli  our  poor  people  ?  "  The  question  indi- 
cates an  awakening  to  the  inevitable  necessity  of  inquiry 
and  exertion  in  other  fields  than  the  purely  theological  one  ; 
and  one  of  these,  in  both  Lowlands  and  Highlands,  is  that 
in  which  Chalmers  so  long  labored.  The  case  of  the  poor 
must  be  wisely  considered,  or  there  will  rest  no  blessing 
on  the  exertions  of  the  churches. 

But  we  must  bring  our  remarks  to  a  close ;  and  we  would 
do  so  by  citing  an  instance,  only  too  lamentably  obvious 
at  the  present  time,  of  how  very  much,  in  our  mixed  state 
of  existence  as  creatures  composed  of  soul  and  body,  a 
purely  physical  event  may  affect  the  religious  interests  of 
a  great  empire.  The  potato  disease  was  a  thing  purely 
physical.  It  seemed  to  have  nothing  of  the  nature  of  a 
missionary  society  about  it ;  it  did  not  engage  missionaries, 
nor  appoint  committees,  nor  hire  committee-i'ooms,  nor 
hold  meetings  ;  and  it  seemed  to  have  as  little  favor  fpi 
popish  priests  as  for  Episcopalian  curates  or  Presbyterian 
ministers.  And  yet,  by  pressing  out  the  popish  population 
of  Ireland  on  every  side,  and  surcharging  with  them  the 
large  towns  of  England,  Scotland,  and  the  United  States, 
it  has  done  more  in  some  three  or  four  years  for  the  spread 
of  popery  in  Britain  and  America  than  all  the  missionary 
societies  of  all  the  evangelistic  churches  of  the  world  have 
done  for  the  spread  of  Protestantism  during  the  last  half- 
century.  He  must  be  an  obtuse  man  who  fails  to  see,  with 
such  an  example  before  him,  how  intimately  associated 
with  the  ecclesiastical  the  secular  may  be. 


252  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 


XII 

THE  CRIME-MAKING  LAWS. 

If  there  was  a  special  law  enacted  against  all  red-haired 
men  and  all  men  six  feet  high,  red-haired  men  and  men 
six  feet  high  would  in  a  short  time  become  exceedingly 
dangerous  characters.  In  order  to  render  them  greatly 
worse  than  their  neighbors,  there  would  be  nothing  more 
necessary  than  simply  to  set  them  beyond  the  pale  of  the 
constitution,  by  providing  by  statute  that  whoever  lodged 
informations  against  red-haired  men  or  men  six  feet  high 
should  be  handsomely  rewarded,  and  that  the  culprits 
themselves  should  be  lodged  in  prison,  and  kept  at  hard 
labor,  on  every  conviction,  from  a  fortnight  to  sixty  days. 
The  country  would  at  length  come  to  groan  under  the  in- 
tolerable burden  of  its  red-haired  men  and  its  men  six  feet 
high.  There  would  be  frequent  paragraphs  in  our  columns 
and  elsewhere  to  the  effect  that  some  three  or  four  re- 
spectable white-haired  gentlemen,  varying  in  height  from 
five  feet  nothing  to  five  feet  five,  had  been  grievously  mal- 
treated in  laudably  attempting  to  apprehend  some  formi- 
dable felon,  habit  and  repute  six  feet  high  ;  or  to  the  effect 
that  Constable  D.  of  the  third  division  had  been  barba- 
rously murdered  by  a  red-haired  rufiian.  Philosophers 
would  come  to  discover,  that  so  deeply  implanted  was  the 
bias  to  outrage  and  wrong  in  red-haired  nature,  that  it  held 
by  the  scoundrels  even  after  their  heads  had  become  bald 
and  their  whiskers  gray ;  and  that  so  inherent  was  ruffian- 
ism to  six-feet-highism,  that  though  four  six-feet  fellows 
had,  for  the  sake  of  example,  been  cut  short  at  the  knees, 
they  had  remained,  notwithstanding  the  mutilation,  as  in- 
corrigible ruffians  as  ever.     From  time  to  time  there  would 


THE   CRIME-MAKING   LAWS.  253 

be  some  terrible  tragedy  enacted  by  some  tremendous  in- 
carnation of  illegality  and  evil,  who  was  both  red-haired 
and  six  feet  high  to  boot.  Of  course,  to  secure  the  pro- 
tection of  the  lieges,  large  additions  would  be  made  to  the 
original  statute ;  and  thus  the  mischief  would  go  on  from 
bad  to  worse,  unmitigated  by  the  teachings  of  the  pulpit 
or  the  press,  and  unrestrained  by  the  terrors  of  the  magis- 
tracy, until  some  bold  reformer,  rather  peculiar  in  his 
notions,  would  suggest,  as  a  last  resource,  the  repeal  of 
what  ere  now  would  come  to  be  very  generally  lauded 
as  the  sole  safeguards  of  the  public  peace  and  the  glory 
of  the  Constitution, —  the  anti-red-hair,  anti-six-feet-high 
enactments.  And  after  the  agitation  of  some  fifteen  or 
twenty  years  —  after  articles  innumerable  had  been  writ- 
ten on  both  sides,  and  speeches  without  number  had  been 
spoken  —  the  enactments  would  come  to  be  fairly  re- 
scinded, and  the  tall  and  the  red-haired,  in  the  lapse  of  a 
generation  or  two,  would  improve,  in  consequence,  into 
good  subjects  and  quiet  neighbors. 

Is  the  conception  too  wild  and  extravagant?  Let  the 
reader  pause  for  a  moment  ere  he  condemns.  England  lit- 
tle more  than  a  century  ago  was  infamous  for  the  number 
of  its  murders  committed  on  the  highway.  Hawksworth's 
story,  in  the  "  Adventurer,"  of  the  highwayman  who  mur- 
dered a  beloved  son,  just  restored,  after  a  long  absence,  to 
his  country  and  his  friends,  before  the  eyes  of  his  father, 
and  then  threw  the  old  man  a  shilling,  lest,  said  the  ruffian, 
he  should  be  stopped  at  the  tolls,  was  not  deemed  out  of 
nature  at  the  time.  It  was,  on  the  contrary,  quite  a  prob- 
able occurrence  in  the  days  of  Jack  Sheppard,  Turpin,  and 
Captain  Macheath.  About  an  age  earlier,  as  shown  by  the 
"London  Gazette,"  one  of  the  oldest  of  English  newspa- 
pers, there  were  from  six  to  eight  murders  perpetrated 
yearly  by  foot-pads  on  the  public  roads ;  and  paragraphs 
such  as  the  following,  which  we  extract  from  this  ancient 
journal,  were  comparatively  common  :  "On  the  23d  of 
this  month  [Mar^.h,  1682],  three  highwaymen,  two  on  horse- 
22 


254  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

,T)ack  and  one  on  foot,  set  upon  two  persons  on  Hindhead 
Heath,  in  Surrey,  one  of  whom  they  mortally  wounded, 
and  took  from  them  a  black  crop  gelding  near  fifteen  hands 
high  ;"  or  such  notices  as  the  following,  inserted  as  a  gen- 
eral citation  of  witnesses,  by  the  keeper  of  the  Newgate  : 

—  "  Whereas  many  robberies  are  daily  committed  on  the 
highways,  to  the  great  prejudice  of  his  Majesty's  subjects, 

—  these  are  to  give  notice  that  there  has  lately  been  taken 
and  are  now  in  the  custody  of  Captain  Richardson,  Mas- 
ter^of  his  Majesty's  jail  at  Newgate,  several  supposed  high- 
way robbers,  of  whom  here  foUoweth  the  names  and  de- 
scriptions," etc.  Such  was  the  state  of  things  in  times 
when  the  earlier  British  novelists,  desirous  of  making  the 
incidents  lie  thick  in  their  fictions,  gave  them  the  form  of 
a  journey,  and  sent  their  heroes  travelling  over  England. 
The  evil,  however,  was  at  length  put  down,  partly  through 
the  marked  improvement  which  took  place  in  the  police  of 
the  countiy,  but  still  more  through  the  great  increase  of 
its  provincial  newspapers,  and  the  vast  acceleration  in  the 
rate  of  its  travelling,  —  circumstances  which  have  united 
to  render  the  escape  or  concealment  of  the  highwayman 
impossible.  And  so  highway  murder  has  become  one  of 
almost  the  rarest  offences  in  the  criminal  register  of  the 
country.  Very  different  is  the  case,  however,  with  mur- 
ders of  another  kind.  Our  newspapers  no  longer  contain 
in  their  English  corner  paragraphs  at  all  resembling  those 
we  have  just  quoted,  by  way  of  specimen,  from  the  "Lon- 
don Gazette,"  and  which  so  strike  in  the  perusal,  as  char- 
acteristic of  an  age  only  half  escaped  from  barbarism  ;  but 
they  exhibit,  instead,  their  paragraphs,  to  the  barbarity  of 
which  the  accommodating  influence  of  custom  can  alone  rec- 
oncile the  I'eader,  and  which  will  be  held,  we  trust,  in  less 
than  half  an  age  hence,  to  bear  as  decidedly  the  stamp  of 
savageism.  Within  the  last  few  years  there  have  been  no 
fewer  than  twenty-five  gamekeepers  murdered  in  England. 
The  cases  were  all  ascertained  cases;  coroners'  juries  sat 
upon  the  bodies,  and  verdicts  of  wilful   murde*-  were  re- 


THE   CRIME-MAKING   LAWS.  255 

turned  against  certain  parties,  known  or  unknown ;  and 
these  were,  of  coui'se,  but  the  murders  on  the  one  side. 
We  occasionally  hear  of  the  death  of  a  poacher;  and  all  our 
readers  must  remember  a  late  horrible  instance,  in  which 
an  unfortunate  man  of  this  class,  captured  after  a  des- 
perate resistance,  was  found  to  be  so  dreadfully  injured 
in  the  fray  that  his  bowels  protruded  through  his  wounds. 
But  in  by  far  the  gi'eater  number  of  cases  the  poor 
wounded  wretch  has  strength  enough  left  to  bear  him  to 
his  miserable  home,  and  the  parish  hears  little  more  of  the 
matter  than  that  there  has  been  a  brief  illness  and  a  sudden 
death.  It  is  quite  bad  enough  that  Ilawksworth's  story 
of  the  highwayman  should  be  a  not  improbable  one  in  the 
times  of  the  first  two  Georges  ;  it  is  still  worse  that  Crabbe's 
story  of  the  lival  brothers  who  killed  each  other  in  a  mid- 
night fray,  in  which  the  one  engaged  in  the  character  of  a 
poacher  the  other  in  that  of  a  gamekeeper,  should  be  as 
little  improbable  in  the  times  of  William  and  Victoria. 

Be  it  remembered,  too,  that  the  peculiar  barbarism  of 
the  modern  period  is  greatly  more  a  national  reproach  than 
that  of  the  ancient.  The  older  enormities  were  enormities 
in  spite  of  a  good  law  ;  the  newer  enormities  are  enormi- 
ties that  arise  directly  out  of  a  bad  one.  There  is  sound 
sense  as  well  as  good  feeling  in  the  remark  of  Mrs.  Saddle- 
tree on  the  law,  in  Effie  Dean's  case,  as  laid  down  by  her 
learned  husband  the  saddler.  "  The  crime,"  remarked  the 
wiseacre  to  his  better  half,  "is  rather  a  favorite  of  the  law, 
this  species  of  murder  being  one  of  its  own  creating." 
"  Then,  if  the  law  makes  murders,"  replied  the  matron, 
"  the  law  should  be  hanged  for  them ;  or  if  they  would 
hang  up  a  lawyer  instead,  the  country  would  find  nae  fiiut." 
All  the  twenty-five  ascertained  murders  to  which  we  have 
referred,  and  the  at  least  equally  great  number  of  concealed 
ones,  were  crimes  of  the  law's  making,  —  murders  which 
as  certainly  originated  in  the  law,  and  which,  if  the  law 
did  not  exist,  would  as  certainly  not  have  been,  as  the 
supposed  crimes  of  our  illustration  under  the  anti-red-hair, 


256  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

anti-six-fcet-high  statutes.  No  murders  arise  out  of  the 
killing  of  seals  and  sea-gulls ;  why  should  there  arise  any 
murders  out  of  the  killing  of  hares  and  pheasants?  Simply 
because  there  is  a  pabulum  of  law  in  the  one  case,  out  of 
which  the  transgression  springs,  and  no  producing  pabu- 
lum of  law  in  the  other.  There  can  be  nothing  more  peril- 
ous to  the  morals  of  the  people  than  stringent  laws,  that, 
instead  of  attaching  their  penalties  to  actual  crime,  and 
having,  in  consequence,  like  the  laws  against  the  house- 
breaker and  the  highwayman,  the  whole  weight  of  the 
popular  conscience  on  their  side,  create  the  crime  which 
they  punish,  and  have  thus  the  moral  sense  of  the  country 
certainly  not  for,  mayhap  against  them.  They  become 
invariably,  in  all  such  cases,  a  sort  of  machinery  for  con- 
verting useful  subjects  and  honest  men  into  rogues  and  pub- 
lic pests.  Lacking  the  moral  sanction,  their  penalties  are 
neither  more  nor  less  than  a  certain  amount  of  peril,  which 
bold  spirits  do  not  hesitate  to  encounter,  just  as  a  keen 
sportsman  does  not  hesitate  to  encounter  the  modicum  of 
risk  which  he  runs  from  the  gun  that  he  carries.  It  may 
burst  and  kill  him ;  or  in  drawing  it  through  a  hedge  a 
sprig  may  catch  the  trigger,  and  lodge  its  contents  in  his 
body  ;  or  it  may  hang  fire,  and  send  its  charge  through  his 
head  half  a  minute  after  he  has  withdrawn  it  from  his 
shoulder.  Accidents  of  the  kind  happen  in  sporting  coun- 
tries almost  every  month,  —  for  such  is  the  natural  law  of 
accident  in  the  case  ;  but  there  is  no  moral  stigma  attached, 
and  so  men  brave  the  penalty  every  day.  And  such  is  the 
principle,  when  the  law,  equally  dissociated  from  the 
promptings  of  the  moral  sense,  is  not  a  law  of  accident, 
but  of  the  statute-book.  Men  brave  the  danger  of  the 
penalty,  as  they  do  the  peril  of  the  fowling-piece.  But 
there  is  this  ultimate  difference :  without  being  in  any  de- 
gree a  felon  tried  by  his  own  conscience,  the  traverser  of 
the  statutory  enactment  becomes  legally  a  felon  ;  he  may 
be  dealt  with,  like  the  red-haired  or  six-feet-high  felon  of 
our  illustration,  as  decidedly  criminal.     He  is  feroo»ou8ly 


THE  CRIME-MAKING   LAWS.  257 

attacked  with  lethal  weapons  as  a  felon ;  and,  defending 
himself  in  hot  blood  with  the  resembling  weapons,  without 
which  his  amusements  cannot  be  carried  on,  he  becomes 
a  murderer  ;  or  he  is  apprehended,  manacled,  tried,  con- 
demned, imprisoned,  transported,  as  a  felon,  and,  in  passing 
through  so  degrading  a  process,  becomes  at  length  the  ac- 
tual criminal  which  he  had  been  in  the  eye  of  the  law  all 
along.  Few  of  our  readers  can  have  any  adequate  concep- 
tion of  the  immense  mass  of  criminalty  created  yearly  in 
the  empire  by  this  singularly  deteriorating  process.  In  the 
year  1843  there  were  in  England  and  Wales  alone  no  fewer 
than  four  thousand  five  hundred  and  twenty-nine  convic- 
tions under  the  game-laws.  Forty  of  that  number  were 
deemed  cases  of  so  serious  a  nature  that  the  culprits  were 
transported.  In  all  the  other  cases  they  were  either  fined  or 
imprisoned,  —  the  fines  taken  in  the  aggregate  averaging 
two  pounds  sterling,  the  imprisonments  seven  weeks.  And 
it  is  out  of  this  system  of  formidable  penalties  that  the 
numerous  murders  have  arisen,  and  that  the  game-laws  of 
the  country  have,  like  those  of  Draco,  come  to  be  written  in 
blood. 

The  character  of  the  ordinary  Scotch  poacher  must  be 
familiar  to  all  our  readers.  "E'en  in  our  ashes,"  says  the 
poet,  "  live  our  wonted  fires."  There  are  few  things  more 
truly  natural  to  man  than  a  love  of  field-sports.  Voyagers 
have  remarked  of  the  wild  dogs  of  Juan  Fernandez,  that 
they  hunt  in  packs.  It  needs,  it  would  seem,  no  previous 
training  to  make  them  hunting  animals:  they  are  such  by 
nature ;  and,  placed  in  the  proper  circumstances,  the  nature 
at  once  develops  itself.  Now,  it  would  appear  as  if  man 
were  also  a  hunting  animal :  the  peculiar  occupation  which 
the  first  circumstances  of  society  in  almost  every  country 
i"ender  imperative  upon  the  species,  and  for  which,  in  an 
early  age  of  the  world,  ere  the  human  family  was  yet  dis- 
persed, Nimrod  became  so  famous,  is  perhaps  of  all  others 
the  most  natural  to  us.  What  the  passion  which  leads  to 
it  is  in  the  aristocracy,  the  game-laws  serve  of  themselves 
22* 


258  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

sufficiently  to  testify;  and  the  humbler  classes  feel  the 
impulse  as  strongly.  It  is  truly  wonderful  how  soon  men 
brought  up  in  a  state  of  civilization  accommodate  them- 
selves, when  thrown  by  circumstances  among  a  barbarous 
j)eople,  or  into  a  state  of  seclusion  from  their  fellows,  to 
the  life  of  the  hunter,  and  learn  to  love  it.  And  the 
inherent  feeling  is,  of  course,  as  little  blamable  in  the 
humble  as  in  the  wealthy  or  titled  man.  We  have  seen  it 
greatly  indulged  in  by  dwellers  along  the  seashore,  — 
farmers,  cottars,  mechanics,  —  and  almost  every  more  spir- 
ited young  man  in  the  locality  becoming  in  a  lesser  or 
gioater  degree  a  marksman.  For  a  certain  period,  a  young 
fellow  of  fair  character  has  been  shooting  east,  over  the 
beach,  towards  the  sea,  and  picking  down  the  scart  and 
the  gray  goose,  the  coot  and  duck,  and  now  and  then 
sending  a  bullet  through  the  head  of  an  otter  or  seal.  A 
tempting  opportunity  occurs,  however;  and,  instead  of 
shooting  east,  he  shoots  west,  over  the  beach,  towards  the 
land,  and  lodges  his  shot,  not  in  a  scart  or  seal,  but  in  a 
woodcock  or  hare.  Formerly  he  was  in  danger  from  his 
gun,  or  in  scrambling  among  the  rocks:  he  is  now  in  dan- 
ger of  being  fined,  and,  should  he  frequently  repeat  the 
offence,  of  being  imprisoned ;  but  in  his  own  estimate  and 
that  of  his  neighbors  the  one  kind  of  danger  is  no  more 
connected  with  any  moral  stigma  than  the  other.  Had 
he  fired  west,  and  wilfully  shot  a  sheep  or  goat,  the  case 
would,  of  course,  be  altogether  different;  but  he  is  merely 
an  occasional  poacher,  not  a  scoundrel.  And  if  the  game- 
laws  be  not  strictly  enforced  in  the  district,  he  remains,  as 
at  first,  a  good  and  useful  member  of  society,  in  no  degree 
either  the  better  or  the  worse  for  now  and  then  shooting  a 
coot  or  wild  goose  that  has  no  standing  in  the  game-list, 
and  now  and  then  picking  down  a  partridge  or  heath  hea 
that  has. 

But  in  those  parts  of  England  where  game  are  rigidly 
preserved,  and  the  game-laws  strictly  enforced,  the  process 
is  different.     The  commencement  of  the  poacher's  course 


THE   CRIME-MAKING   LAWS.  259 

is  nearly  the  same  in  both  cases.  There  is  the  same  in-. 
stinctive  love  of  sport,  and  the  same  general  conviction 
that  game  is  not  real  property,  —  a  conviction  which  every 
view  of  the  subject  serves  but  to  strengthen  and  confirm. 
The  Englishman  sees  that  if  his  neighbor  the  shopkeeper 
or  banker  detects  a  rascal  robbing  his  till  or  breaking  his 
strong  box,  he  never  once  thinks  of  engaging  him  as  his 
shopman  or  cashier;  a,nd  that,  on  the  same  principle,  the 
sheep-feeder  or  farmer  avoids  hiring  as  his  shepherd  a  man 
notorious  for  stealing  sheep,  or  declines  employing  as  his 
farm-servant  a  man  who  has  been  tried  and  cast  for 
stealing  horses.  He  finds,  too,  that  the  fair  trader  never 
bargains  with  habit-and-repute  thieves  for  their  stolen 
goods.  But  he  sees  that  an  entirely  different  principle 
obtains  among  game-preservers.  Not  a  few  of  them,  bent 
on  stocking  their  preserves,  deal  freely  with  poachers  for 
live  game ;  and  still  more  of  them,  in  choosing  their  game- 
keepers, prefer  poachers  —  clever,  active  fellows,  exten- 
sively acquainted  among  their  own  class — to  any  other  sort 
of  persons  whatever.  Nor,  if  the  poachers  be  nothing  worse 
than  poachers,  can  there  be  a  single  objection  to  the  ar- 
rangement, save  on  the  unrecognizable,  untenable  ground 
that  game  is  property.  It  is,  however,  the  tendency  of 
the  poacher,  in  a  country  where  the  game-laws  are  strictly 
enforced,  to  become  something  worse.  He  goes  to  the 
woods,  shoots  or  traps  game,  and  finds  himself,  in  conse- 
quence, in  the  circumstances  of  the  red-haired  or  six-feet- 
high  men  of  our  illustration.  He  is  apprehended  and  fined; 
and  as  his  wages  as  a  laborer  are  small,  he  has  just  to  go 
to  the  woods  again,  in  order  —  we  quote  a  remark  grown 
into  a  proverb  among  the  class  —  that  ho  may  seek  his 
money  in  the  place  where  he  lost  it.  He  is  again  appre- 
hended, and  imprisoned  for  some  six  or  eight  weeks,  during 
which  time  he  is  occasionally  visited  by  the  chaplain  of 
the  prison,  who  tells  him  he  has  done  wrong,  but  always, 
somehow,  forgets  to  quote  the  text  which  proves  it,  and 
is  besides  not  particulai'ly  clear  in  his  argument.     He  re* 


260  POLITICAL  A^B   SOCIAL. 

ceives,  too,  visits  of  a  different  character,  —  those  of  hard- 
ened felons;  and  their  lessons  impress  him  mnch  more 
deeply  than  the  teachings  of  the  chaplain.  He  is  again 
discharged  ;  but  he  has  now  become  I'ather  an  unsettled 
sort  of  person,  and  fails  not  unfrequently  to  procure  employ- 
ment. But  the  neighboring  preserves  prove  an  unfailing 
lesource :  he  is  time  after  time  surprised  and  apprehended; 
but  he  at  length  becomes  weary  of  passive  submission  ;  the 
hour  is  late,  the  thicket  dark  and  lonely,  the  gamekeeper 
alone ;  they  are  simply  man  to  man ;  and  in  the  scuffle 
which  ensues  the  keeper  is  baffled  and  beaten  off.  Better 
a  brief  fray  than  a  heavy  fine  or  a  long  imprisonment.  The 
poacher's  associates,  ere  he  has  reached  this  stage,  are 
chiefly  desperate  men.  "  There  are  notorious  poachers," 
says  Mr.  Bright,  in  his  speech  on  the  game-laws  with  which 
he  prefaced  bis  motion  for  a  parliamentary  committee  on 
the  subject,  "  who  have  by  a  long  succession  of  offences 
and  imprisonments  been  driven  out  almost  from  the  pale 
of  society,  —  a  kind  of  savages,  living  in  hovels,  or  wher- 
ever they  can  find  shelter.  One  of  this  outcast  class  was 
recently  tried  at  the  assizes  for  an  act  of  incendiarism." 
Such  company  can  have,  of  course,  no  tendency  to  improve 
a  man's  morals,  or  to  increase  his  tenderness  of  human 
life.  He  engages  in  the  forest  in  one  fray  more ;  and  he 
who  commenced  his  career  as  a  law-made  criminal,  and 
free  of  moral  stain  in  the  abstract,  terminates  it  in  the 
character  of  an  atrocious  felon  in  the  sight  both  of  God 
and  man,  —  a  red-handed  murderer,  through  whom  two 
human  lives  have  been  lost  to  society,  —  that  of  his  victim 
and  his  own. 

It  must  be  miserable  policy  that  balances  against  the 
lives  of  human  creatures  and  the  morals  of  thousands  of 
our  humbler  people,  the  mere  idle  amusements  of  a  privi- 
leged class,  comparatively  few  in  number,  and  who  have  a 
great  many  other  amusements  full  within  their  reach.  Even 
were  their  claims  to  the  game  of  the  country  clear, — and 
all  know  that  a  right  of  property  in  wild  animals  can  be 


THE  CRIME-MAKING  LAWS.  2G1 

constituted  by  taking  and  keeping  thera,  as  Cowper  did 
his  hares,  — still,  did  these  claims  interfere  with  the  public 
good,  they  ought  of  necessity  to  give  way.  Justice,  as 
certainly  as  humanity,  demands  the  sacrifice.  We  are 
much  pleased,  in  this  point  of  view,  with  an  anecdote  re- 
lated by  Mr.  Jesse  in  his  "Gleanings  in  Natural  History," 
an  exceedingly  interesting  volume,  from  which  the  reader 
may  learn  that  there  are  many  other  ways  of  deriving 
amusement  from  animals  besides  killing  them.  "One  of 
the  keepers  in  Richmond  Park  informs  me,"  says  the  natu- 
ralist, "that  he  has  often  heard  his  father,  who  was  also  a 
keeper,  mention  that,  in  the  reign  of  George  II.,  a  large 
flock  of  turkeys,  consisting  of  not  less  than  three  thousand, 
was  regularly  kept  up  as  part  of  the  stock  of  the  park.  In 
the  autumn  and  winter  they  fed  on  acorns,  of  which  they 
must  have  had  an  abundant  supply,  since  the  park  was 
then  almost  entirely  wooded  with  oak,  with  a  thick  cover 
of  furze ;  and  although  at  present  eleven  miles  in  circum- 
ference, it  was  formerly  much  larger,  and  connected  with 
extensive  possessions  of  the  Crown,  some  of  which  are  now 
alienated.  Stacks  of  barley  were  also  put  up  in  different 
places  of  the  park  for  their  support ;  and  some  of  the  old 
turkey-cocks  are  said  to  have  weighed  from  twenty-five  to 
thirty  pounds.  They  were  hunted  with  dogs,  and  made 
to  take  refuge  in  a  tree,  where  they  were  frequently  shot 
by  George  II.  I  have  not  been  able  to  learn  how  long 
they  had  been  preserved  in  the  park  before  his  reign ;  but 
they  were  totally  destroyed  towards  the  latter  end  of  it, 
in  consequence  of  the  danger  to  which  the  keepers  were 
exposed  in  protecting  them  from  poachers,  with  whom 
they  had  many  bloody  fights,  being  frequently  ovei'powered 
by  them."  Here  we  have  a  pleasing  instance  of  even  the 
monarch  of  the  country  yielding  up  his  amusements  in 
order  that  the  lives  of  his  servants  might  not  be  endan- 
gered. David  would  not  drink  of  the  water  which  was, 
he  said,  "  the  blood  of  the  men  that  went  for  it  in  jeopardy 
of  their  lives,"  and  so  he  "  poured  it  out  unto  the  Lord." 


POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 


XIII. 

IS  GAME  PR0PERTT1 

Whkn"  we  last  walked  out  through  several  of  our  busier 
Edinburgh  streets  into  the  country,  we  did  not  see  a  single 
article  in  the  shop-windows  or  elsewhere  which  we  did  not 
at  once  recognize  as  property,  and  of  whose  general  line- 
age, as  such,  we  could  not  give  some  satisfactory  account. 
Human  skill  and  labor  had  been  employed  upon  them  all, 
from  the  nicely-fashioned  implement  or  machine  in  which 
the  baser  metals  had  become  more  valuable  than  silver,  or 
the  elaborate  strip  of  gossamer-like  tissue  in  which  the 
original  vegetable  fibre  had  been  made  to  outprice  its 
weight  in  gold,  to  the  wild  intertropical  nut  or  date 
gathered  from  their  several  palms  under  the  burning  sun 
of  the  African  or  Asiatic  desert,  or  the  costly  furs  of  the 
Arctic  hunter,  purchased  by  the  adven  nrous  merchant  of 
a  civilized  country  amid  the  wild  wastes  of  Lapland,  or  on 
the  icy  confines  of  Baffin's  Bay  or  Mackenzie  River.  All 
was  property  on  which  the  eye  rested,  —  that  of  individ- 
uals or  the  community ;  —  houses,  churches,  public  halls, 
the  paved  streets,  the  lamps,  the  railings,  the  shrubs  and 
flowers  in  the  squares  and  gardens,  the  very  stones  on  the 
macadamized  road,  —  all  was  property. 

As  we  cleared  the  suburbs,  with  their  reticulations  of 
cross  walls,  their  scattered  trees,  and  their  straggling  houses, 
there  opened  upon  us  a  wide  extent  of  country,  with  its 
woods  and  fields,  its  proprietors'  seats,  and  its  farm-stead- 
ings. And  here  was  property  of  another  kind,  —  property 
in  land,  emphatically  termed  by  our  laws  —  in  contradis- 
tinction to  the  portable  valuables  which  we  had  just  seen 


IS   GAME   PROPERTY  ?  263 

in  passing  outwards,  in  the  shops,  and  on  the  persons  of 
the  passengers,  —  real  property.  And  real  property  the 
land  of  the  country  unquestionably  is,  —  more  obscure  in 
its  lineage,  mayhap,  than  the  furs  furnished  in  barter  by 
the  American  Indian,  or  the  flowered  piece  of  netting 
elaborated  to  order  by  the  incessant  toil,  prolonged  for 
months,  of  the  poor  lace-maker,  but  obscure  merely  on  the 
principle  through  which  the  early  history  of  an  ancient 
people  or  long-derived  family  is  obscure,  —  obscure  simply 
because  its  beginnings  reach  far  beyond  the  era  of  the 
annalist  and  the  chronicler.  It  has  been  property  so  long 
that  the  metaphysician  can  but  surmise  how  it  became 
such ;  nor  can  the  historian  decide  which  of  the  philoso- 
pher's many  guesses  on  the  subject  is  the  best  one.  We 
incline  to  the  solution  of  Locke,  though  in  some  respects 
inadequate,  in  preference  to  that  of  Paley,  who  holds,  most 
unphilosophically  we  think,  that  the  real  foundation  )f 
right  in  the  case  is  the  law  of  the  land.  Law  of  the  land  ! 
We  could  as  soon  believe  that  a  son  was  the  producing 
cause  through  which  his  father  came  into  being,  or  that  a 
daughter  was  the  producing  cause  of  her  mother's  existerce. 
Property  in  the  land  existed  long  ere  there  were  laws  in 
the  land.  Cain  must  have  been  as  certainly  the  proprietor 
of  the  field  which  he  rendered  valuable  by  incorporating 
his  labor  with  its  soil,  as  Abel  of  the  flock  which  his  labor 
had  tamed  or  i-eared.  Both  the  land  and  the  animals  were 
general  gifts  to  the  species  from  the  Beneficent  Giver  of 
all;  and  the  individual  right  was  fairly  constituted  ir  the 
one  case  by  the  man  who  broke  in  the  animals  from  their 
state  of  original  wildness,  and  in  the  other  by  the  man 
who  cleared  and  tilled  and  sowed  the  hitherto  uncultiva- 
ted waste,  and  converted  it  into  a  patrimony  worthy  of 
being  bequeathed  to  his  children.  There  must  have  been 
at  least  as  much  labor  expended  in  the  case  of  the  fvgri- 
culturist  as  in  that  of  the  shepherd  ;  apd,  if  the  poets  are 
to  be  regarded  as  authorities,  —  and  there  are  instances 
in  which  they  wonderfully  approximate  to  the  trutU. — 


264  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

considerably  more.  Paley  tells  us  that  the  first  partition  of 
an  estate  which  we  read  of  was  that  which  took  place  be- 
tween Abram  and  Lot,  —  "  If  thou  wilt  take  the  left  hand, 
then  I  will  go  to  the  right ;  or  if  thou  depart  to  the  right 
band,  then  I  will  go  to  the  left."  Had  he  examined  his 
Bible  just  a  little  more  carefully,  he  would  have  found 
that  the  transaction  was  not  a  partition  of  land, — for 
Abram  had  none  at  the  time,  —  but  a  mere  temporary  ar- 
rangement regarding  the  occupation  for  a  certain  terra  of 
a  certain  extent  of  common ;  that  the  portions  of  land  in 
that  country  with  which,  according  to  Locke,  human  labor 
had.  been  mixed  up,  had  already,  in  consequence  of  the 
incorporation,  become  property;  and  that  when  Abram 
desired  the  field  of  Machpelah,  with  the  sepulchral  "  cave 
that  was  in  the  end  thereof,"  he  had  to  purchase  it  of  the 
proprietor  for  "four  hundred  shekels  of  silver."  If  the 
sole  foundation  of  men's  rights  to  their  landed  properties 
was,  as  Paley  holds,  the  law  of  the  land,  —  if  there  had 
been  no  previous  foundation  of  right  on  which  the  law 
itself  rested,  —  we  would  have  to  regard  as  miserably 
inadequate  and  precarious  indeed  the  tenures  of  our  laird- 
ocracy,  and  to  recognize  the  aspirations  of  the  levelling 
Chartist  and  the  agrarian  ten-acre  man  as  at  once  rational 
and  fair.  The  right  which  the  law  had  created  at  one  time 
it  might  without  blame  disannul  at  another ;  for  if  the  law 
did  not  rest  on  a  heaven-derived  justice,  but  was  itself  a 
primary  foundation,  and  rendered  just  whatever  rested  on 
it-,  justice  would  of  course  be  as  variable  in  its  nature  as 
opinion  among  the  law-making  majorities  of  the  country; 
and  so  it  would  not  be  more  than  equally  just  for  the  Con- 
Bervative  majorities  of  to-day  to  secure  their  estates  to  the 
existing  proprietors,  than  for  the  Chartist  majorities  of  to- 
morrow to  break  up  these  estates  into  single  fields,  and 
give  a  field  apiece  to  the  working-men  of  the  country. 
The  law  of  the  land  cannot  create  property :  it  can  merely 
extend  its  sanction  and  protection  to  those  previously 
existing  rights  of  property  on  which  all  legislation  on  the 


IS    GAME   PROPERTY  ?  265 

subject  must  rest,  or  be  mere  enacted  violence  and  outrage, 
abhorrent  to  that  ancient  underived  justice  which  existed 
ere  man  was,  and  which  shall  long  survive  every  merely 
human  law. 

Nay,  even  in  cases  where  man's  labor  has  not  yet  been 
incorporated  with  the  soil,  —  on  wide  moors  and  among 
rugged  hills,  where  he  has  neither  ploughed  nor  planted,  — 
it  is  for  the  benefit  of  the  species  that  individual  rights  of 
proprietorship  should  exist  and  be  recognized.  The  pro- 
prietor virtually  holds,  in  many  such  cases,  not  merely  in 
his  own  behalf,  but  in  that  of  the  country  also.  We  were 
never  more  forcibly  struck  by  the  fact  than  when  travelling 
several  months  ago  in  the  mainland  of  Orkney,  in  a  local- 
ity where  the  properties  are  small,  and  there  exists  a  vast 
breadth  of  undivided  common.  Wherever  the  rights  of 
individual  proprietors  extended,  we  found  land  of  some 
value ;  we  at  least  found  vegetation  and  a  vegetable  soil. 
On  the  common,  on  the  contrary,  there  was  almost  no 
vegetable  soil,  and  scarce  any  vegetation.  The  upper  layer 
of  mould,  scanty  at  first,  had  been  stripped  off  by  repeated 
parings,  and  carried  away  for  fuel  ;  and  for  hundreds  of 
acres  together  the  boulder  clay  lay  exposed  on  the  surface, 
here  and  there  mottled  by  a  tuft  of  stunted  heath,  but 
covered  by  no  continuous  carpeting  of  even  moss  or  lichen. 
Were  such  the  state  of  the  entire  island,  it  would  be 
wholly  uninhabitable :  it  is  the  rights  of  individual  prop- 
erty alone  that  have  preserved  Pomona  to  its  people. 
Even  a  wood  of  any  value  is  never  suffered  to  grow  on  a 
common,  unless,  perchance,  in  the  uninhabited  recesses  of 
a  country  :  no  peasant  ever  dreams  of  sparing  a  sapling  in 
order  that  it  may  expand  into  a  tree  for  the  benefit  of  his 
neighbor's  children.  The  winter  is  severe,  and,  standing 
in  need  of  fuel,  he  cuts  the  promising  plant  down  by  a 
stroke  of  his  bill,  and,  fagoting  it  up  with  several  hundred 
others,  he  carries  it  home  to  his  fire.  Property  in  land  is, 
we  repeat,  real  property,  —  pi'operty  held  not  merely  for 
the  benefit  of  individual  proprietors,  but  also  for  the  best 
23 


266  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

interests  of  the  community;  for,  did  all  the  land  belong  to 
all,  it  would  be  of  no  value  to  any. 

Such  were  some  of  our  reflections  as  we  walked  on  from 
field  to  field  into  the  open  country.  In  approaching  a 
small  stream  that  divided  the  lands  of  two  proprietors,  we 
startled  a  hare  that  had  been  couching  amid  a  plot  of  tur- 
nips. It  ran  downwards  for  a  few  score  yards  along  a  fur- 
row, stopped  short,  looked  round,  resumed  progress,  cleared 
the  little  stream  at  a  bound,  and  was  then  lost  to  our  view 
amid  a  brake  of  furze  that  skirted  one  of  the  fields  of  the 
neighboring  proprietor.  As  we  walked  on,  and,  after  cross- 
ing the  streamlet,  were  rising  on  the  hillside,  beside  a  field 
laid  down  with  wheat,  we  raised  a  covey  of  partridges. 
They  went  whirring  above  our  head,  and,  reversing  the 
course  of  the  hare,  flew  over  the  stream,  and  settled  in  a 
second  field  of  wheat,  just  beside  the  turnip  one.  That  hare 
and  these  partridges  were,  it  seems,  property ;  and  we  had 
witnessed  on  this  occasion  a  curious  transferrence  of  valua- 
bles that  had  taken  place  without  bargain  or  agreement  on 
the  part  of  any  one.  Up  to  a  certain  moment  the  hare 
had  belonged  to  one  proprietor ;  when  we  had  first  started 
it,  and  when  it  was  running  along  the  furrow,  and  when  it 
had  turned  round  to  reconnoitre,  it  had  belonged  to  the 
proprietor  of  the  turnip-plot ;  but  no  sooner  had  it  cleared 
the  stream,  than  it  straightway  belonged  to  the  proprietor 
of  the  wheatfield  and  the  furze-brake.  And,  as  if  to  make 
the  first  amends  for  the  loss  which  he  had  just  sustained, 
the  partridges  we  had  raised,  from  being  the  property  of 
him  of  the  field  and  the  brake,  had,  on  flying  over  the  run- 
nel, become  the  property  of  him  of  the  turnip-plot.  Cer- 
tainly a  strange  mode  of  conveyancing !  It  seemed  equally 
strange,  too,  that  the  turnips  on  which  the  hare  had  just 
been  feeding,  and  the  wheat  which  expanded  the  crops  of 
the  partridges,  did  not  belong  to  either  of  the  proprietors, 
but  were  the  property  of  certain  third  parties  called  tenants. 
We  saw  within  view  at  the  time  a  considerable  number  of 
the  tame  animals.     Enclosed  within  a  fold  of  stakes  and 


IS    GAME    PROPERTY  ?  267 

network,  in  a  corner  of  the  turnip-plot,  there  was  a  flock 
of  sheep  bearing  on  their  necks  a  certain  red  mark  to  dis- 
tinguish them  from  those  of  any  other  sheep-owner;  and 
a  half-dozen  cattle  were  picking  up  their  sustenance  for 
the  day  amid  the  furze  of  the  brake.  The  cattle  belonged 
to  the  farmer  who  rented  the  brake,  and  the  sheep  to  the 
owner  of  the  turnips.  The  one  could  recognize  his  cattle, 
the  other  his  sheep.  If  the  cattle  crossed  the  stream  into 
the  turnip-plot,  or  the  sheep  broke  loose,  and,  o'erleaping 
the  runnel  from  the  opposite  side,  did  damage  to  the 
sprouting  wheat,  or  picked  the  brake  bare,  either  tenant 
would  have  a  legitimate  claim  for  damages  done  his  prop- 
erty, but  there  would  be  no  actual  transfer  of  property  in 
the  case.  The  sheep  would  have  an  owner  equally  on 
both  sides  of  the  streamlet,  in  the  tenant  whose  red  mark 
they  bore ;  and  the  cattle,  whether  in  the  furze-brake  or 
the  turnip-field,  would  be  equally  the  property  of  the  ten- 
ant who  farmed  the  brake.  Certainly,  if  the  game  of  the 
country  be  property,  it  must  be  property  of  a  very  anoma- 
lous kind.  Is  it  personal,  or  real  ?  We  find  it  conveyanced 
from  one  nominal  owner  to  another,  without  these  owners 
knowing  aught  of  the  matter ;  we  find  that  they  have  no 
marks  by  which  to  distinguish  it ;  we  find  that,  unlike  all 
other  live  stock,  it  is  fed  on  food  not  theirs  ;  we  find  that 
they  can  give  no  account  of  its  origin  or  lineage  in  relation 
to  themselves,  —  it  was  neither  gifted  to  them  nor  bought 
by  them ;  it  runs  away  from  them,  and  beyond  a  certain 
point  they  dare  not  follow  it ;  it  is  brought  to  them  when 
dead,  and,  unable  to  recognize  it  as  theirs,  they  purchase  it 
on  the  ordinary  terms.  It  is  not  personal  property;  it  is 
not  real  property ;  it  belongs  to  an  entirely  diflferent  cate- 
gory :  it  is  simply  imaginary  pi'operty. 

We  are  acquainted  with  an  extensive  district  in  the 
north  of  Scotland  in  which  some  thirty  years  ago  there  was 
not  a  single  wild  rabbit.  Rabbits  there  had  once  been  in 
the  locality,  though  at  a  very  early  period.  The  laborer, 
in  running  his  ditches  through  a  sandy  soil,  or  casting  up 


268  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

the  foundation  of  some  farmhouse  or  stone  fence,  laid 
open,  not  unfrequently,  underground  excavations  greatly 
larger  than  those  of  the  mole,  with  here  and  there  a  black- 
ened nest-like  bunch  of  decayed  grass  and  leaves,  huddled 
up  far  from  the  light,  and  here  and  there  a  few  minute 
bones  strewed  along  the  passages ;  and  he  would  point 
out  the  remains  to  his  employer,  and  say  that  the  site  had 
been  once  that  of  a  rabbit-warren.  But  the  rabbits  them- 
selves had  become  as  thoroughly  extinct  in  the  locality  as 
the  wolf  or  bear.  About  a  quarter  of  a  century  since, 
however,  one  of  the  minor  proprietors  of  the  district,  a  gen- 
tleman possessed  of  some  two  or  three  hundred  acres,  let 
loose  a  few  pairs  of  rabbits ;  and  so  enormous  has  been 
the  increase,  that,  over  a  space  of  some  two  or  three  hun- 
dred square  miles,  rabbits  abound  ;  and  of  that  large  area, 
scarcely  one  thirtieth  part  is  in  the  hands  of  the  proprietary; 
it  is  farmed  by  tenants  who  pay  large  rents.  To  whom  be- 
long the  millions  of  rabbits  by  which  it  is  infested,  and  who 
gobble  up  yearly  many  hundred  pounds'  worth  of  the  pro- 
duce? To  the  proj^rietor  who  originally  turned  them  loose? 
Alas !  no :  the  two  or  three  pair,  —  the  progenitors  of  the 
whole, —  that,  so  long  as  they  were  in  his  possession,  were 
assuredly  his,  would  have  scarce  brought  him  half  a  crown 
in  the  market ;  besides,  be  has  long  since  sold  his  little 
property,  and  left  that  part  of  the  kingdom.  His  claim 
would  be  exactly  that  of  the  Italian  boy,  who,  having  turned 
loose  his  two  tame  mice  in  a  granary,  came  back  some  twenty 
years  after,  and  found  their  descendants  twenty  millions 
strong.  Do  they  belong,  then,  to  the  proprietors  of  the  dis- 
trict in  general?  On  what  plea?  They  were  not  theirs 
originally ;  they  have  been  supported,  not  on  their  produce, 
but  on  that  of  their  tenants.  The  non-farming,  non-resi- 
dent proprietors  have  not  a  particle  of  property  in  them  ; 
they  are  simply  a  certain  amount  of  the  grass,  corn,  and  tur- 
nips of  the  farmers  and  farming  proprietors,  converted  into 
animal  food,  and  running  about  on  all  fours.  They  are 
mischievous  vermin  when  alive,  which  no  one  ought  to  be 


IS   GAME   PROPERTY  ?  26& 

prevented  from  destroying,  and  which  the  farmer  has  a 
positive  right  to  destroy  ;  and,  when  dead,  they  ought 
surely,  just  like  the  fur-bearing  animals  of  Siberia  or  Hud- 
son's Bay,  to  be  the  property  of  the  man  who  has  taken 
the  trouble  of  killing  them.  All  quite  right,  says  the 
game-preserver.  You  are,  however,  rather  unfortunate  in 
your  illustration  ;  rabbits  are  not  game.  We  are  quite 
aware  of  that  fact,  we  reply,  and  might  have  chosen  what 
you  would  have  deemed  a  better  illustration.  In  Pomona, 
twenty  years  ago,  there  were  no  hares.  A  young  man, 
the  son  of  a  proprietor,  procured  a  very  few  from  the 
mainland  of  Scotland ;  and  hares  have  in  consequence  be- 
come comparatively  common  in  Orkney,  just  as  rabbits 
have  become  common  in  the  Black  Isle  ;  and,  in  propor- 
tion to  their  number,  they  do  as  much  mischief.  It  is  the 
part  of  the  game-preserver  to  show  how  or  why  the  hares, 
in  such  circumstances,  should  have  become  property,  and 
the  rabbits  not.  Wherein  lies  the  difference  between  two 
tribes  of  animals  that  so  nearly  resemble  each  other?  There 
can  be  but  one  reply  ;  the  law  has  made  the  hare  property, 
which  means  simply,  say  we,  that  the  game-laws  exist,  — 
a  fact  which  it  requires  no  profound  process  of  argumenta- 
tion to  demonstrate.  We  would  never  once  have  thought 
of  writing  our  present  article  if  the  game-laws  did  not  exist. 
But  the  unreal  and  imaginary  property,  which  has  no  other 
foundation  than  human  enactment,  —  which  the  law  makes 
to-day  and  unmakes  to-morrow,  —  which  a  few  years  ago 
comprised  the  wild  rabbit,  and  which  a  few  years  hence 
will  not  comprise  the  wild  hare,  —  is  property  of  an  emi- 
nently precarious  nature.  It  resembles  property  in  ice  in 
a  warm  summer.  Laws  which  are  themselves  not  founded 
in  moral  right  and  the  nature  of  things  form  but  unsolid 
foundations  for  aught  else.  There  was  a  law  in  Russia, 
en£:,3ted  in  the  days  of  the  capricious  Paul,  which  rendered 
it  imperative  on  the  male  portion  of  Paul's  subjects  to 
wear  small-clothes,  and  empowered  the  police  to  cut  short 
at  the  knees  the  trowsers  of  the  refractory.  There  was  a 
23* 


270  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

law  in  Great  Britain  in  the  days  of  George  II,,  that  made 
it  treasonable  for  a  Scotch  Highlander  to  wear  tartan. 
Put  neither  the  one  law  nor  the  other  was  based  on  the 
principles  of  ever-enduring  justice.  Independently  of 
conventional  enactment,  it  is  no  more  a  moral  offence  to 
wear  trowsers  than  to  knock  down  a  partridge,  or  to  sport 
tartans  than  to  shoot  a  hare ;  and  so  trowsers  are  now 
worn  in  Russia,  and  tartans  in  the  Highlands. 

Our  views  on  this  subject  are  in  no  respect  novel :  they 
do  not  belong  to  the  times  of  the  Chartist  and  the  leveller. 
They  have,  on  the  contrary,  been  long  embodied  in  our 
literature.  The  conventional  game-laws  had  never  the 
effect  of  creating  in  Britain  a  conventional  morality,  that 
learned  to  respect  these  laws  as  its  code  and  standard. 
On  this  point  our  masters  of  fiction  —  the  men  whose 
special  work  it  was  to  draw  character  as  they  found  it, 
draperied  in  the  manners  of  their  age,  and  modified  by  its 
opinions  —  are  high  authorities.  When  Goldsmith  re- 
quires for  the  purposes  of  his  story  to  get  a  thoroughly 
honest  fellow  into  Newgate,  he  makes  him  knock  down  a 
hare.  When  Fielding  —  an  honoi-able  magistrate  at  least, 
however  lax  in  other  matters,  and  a  determined  enemy  of 
thieving  —  wishes  to  bring  his  hero  into  trouble  without 
rendering  him  culpable,  he  sends  him,  with  all  the  eagerness 
of  the  young  sportsman,  after  a  covey  he  had  started  on 
his  benefactor's  grounds,  into  the  grounds  of  a  neighboring 
proprietor,  and  makes  him  kill  them  there.  "  The  Ed- 
wardses  of  Southhill,"  says  Mackenzie,  —  "  and  a  worthy 
family  they  were ! "  —  how  came  these  same  worthy  Ed- 
wardses  to  be  ruined  ?  Young  Edwards,  "  who  was  a 
remarkably  good  shooter,  and  kept  a  pointer,"  knocked 
down  a  partridge  one  day  in  the  field  of  his  neighbor,  a 
country  justice,  and  so  the  ruin  was  quite  a  matter  of 
course.  But  there  is  no  end  of  such  instances ;  and  the 
report  on  the  game-laws  shows  on  how  broad  a  basis  of 
reality  these  adepts  in  fictitious  narrative  (the  prose- 
makers)  founded  their  inventions.    Unfoitunately,  in  not 


IS    GAME   PROPERTY  ?  271 

a  few  cases  a  poacher  becomes  a  bad  character,  and  a  source 
of  loss  and  annoyance  to  the  community ;  but  it  is  not  in 
the  beginning  of  his  career,  when  he  is  simply  a  poachei-, 
that  he  is  in  any  degree  a  bad  character.  He  is  in  most 
cases  either  an  adventurous  young  fellow,  a  "good  shooter," 
like  young  Edwards,  and  fond  of  sport,  like  the  game- 
preserving  proprietors  whom  he  annoys,  or  else  some  poor 
man  out  of  employment,  with  a  wife  and  family  dependent 
on  him,  and  much  in  terror  of  the  neighboring  workhouse. 
The  evidence  of  Mr.  M.  Gibson,  Inspector  of  Prisons  in 
England,  is  peculiarly  valuable  on  this  head:  "There  are 
certainly  many,"  he  says,  "who  poach  and  are  sent  to 
prison,  who  would  not  commit  a  robbery."  "There  are 
poachers,"  he  adds,  "from  the  love  of  adventure  and  of 
sport,  who  are  the  most  irreclaimable  of  any;  there  are 
poachers  from  poverty ;  and  there  is  the  young  man,  always 
in  the  fields,  who  from  early  life  has  set  his  bird-trap,  and 
cannot  resist  the  impulse  of  subjugating  the  wild  animals." 
Such  is  Mr.  Gibson's  opinion  of  a  numerous  class  of  poach- 
ers ;  and  their  opinion  of  themselves  seems,  as  might  be 
expected,  not  greatly  worse  than  his.  "  Have  you  had  any 
opportunity,"  he  is  asked  by  the  committee,  "of  ascertaining 
the  opinions  of  chaplains  and  officers  of  prisons  at  all  gen- 
erally as  to  the  operation  of  the  present  game-laws?"  The 
reply  is  eminently  worthy  of  being  carefully  noted  and 
pondered.  "  Yes,"  he  says ;  "  with  regard  to  the  eifect  on 
the  prisoners,  the  opinion  of  the  chaplains  generally  is, 
that  they  can  produce  no  moral  effect  whatever  upon  them 
under  the  game-laws ;  that  they  leave  the  prison  only  to 
return  ;  frequently  replying  to  the  proffei'ed  advice  by  say- 
ing that  the  game  was  made  for  the  poor  as  well  as  the  rich, 
and  that  God  m,ade  the  birds  of  the  air  and  the  fishes  of  the 
sea  for  alV  It  so  happens,  curiously  enough,  that  Judge 
Blackstone,  and  most  of  the  philosophic  thinkers  which 
the  country  has  yet  produced,  were  of  the  same  opinion ; 
but,  more  curious  still,  not  a  few  of  even  the  more  zealous 
game-preserving    proprietors  seem   also   to   entertain   it, 


272  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

though  of  course  in  a  greatly  more  covert  style.  They  are 
indisputably  gentlemen,  and  would  neither  employ  as  their 
servants  habit-and-repute  thieves,  nor  yet  act  the  part  of 
the  Jonathan  Wilds  of  the  last  age  by  being  receivers  of 
stolen  goods.  And  yet  there  are  two  facts  which  come 
fully  out  in  the  evidence.  They  have  no  hesitation  what- 
ever in  employing  as  gamekeepers  and  gamewatchers 
active  habit-and-repute  poachers ;  and  hundreds  of  them, 
when  stocking  their  preserves,  drive  a  trade  with  the 
poachers  that  are  still  actually  such,  in  live  leverets  and 
pheasants'  eggs.  Now  these  live  leverets  and  pheasants' 
eggs  cannot  be  property,  or  else  these  same  game-preserving 
proprietora  would  to  a  certainty  be  not  gentlemen,  but 
scoundrels.  By  their  doings  at  least  they  virtually  decide 
the  question  against  themselves. 


THE  FELONS  OF  THE  COUNTRY.         273 


XIV. 

THE  FELONS  OF  THE  COUNTRY. 

It  is  very  generally  felt  that  life  and  property  are  less 
secure  in  this  country  at  the  present  time  than  they  were 
some  eight  or  ten  years  ago.  In  the  course  of  nearly  a 
century  Britain  had  greatly  changed  its  character  for  the 
better,  in  the  degree  of  security  which  the  civil  magistrate 
afforded  to  the  peaceable  subject.  So  late  as  the  year  1750, 
it  was  unsafe  to  walk  at  night  the  streets  of  our  larger 
towns;  and  the  man  who  sauntered  unprotected  after 
sunset  into  their  quieter  suburbs,  or  traversed  even  their 
more  frequented  approaches,  might  be  almost  certain  of 
being  struck  down  and  robbed,  if  not  murdered.  Fielding, 
who  was  not  only  a  great  novelist  but  also  one  of  the  most 
efficient  magistrates  that  ever  lived,  relates  in  his  narrative 
of  the  earlier  stages  of  that  illness  which  ultimately  carried 
him  off,  that  the  symptoms  were  much  aggravated  by  the 
fatigue  which  he  incurred  in  long  examinations  regarding 
the  street  robberies  and  murders  of  London,  in  especial  by 
the  examinations  respecting  '■'■Jive  different  murders,  all 
committed  within  the  space  of  a  week  by  different  gangs  of 
street  robbers."  The  materials  of  his  comparatively  little- 
known  volume,  "  The  Life  of  Jonathan  Wild,"  were  col- 
lected during  this  period  of  crime  and  outrage ;  nor  does 
the  work,  as  a  whole,  exaggerate  the  actual  state  of  things 
at  the  time.  Another  of  his  works  he  entitled  an  "  Inquiry 
into  the  Increase  of  Thieves  and  Robbers,"  —  "a  work  which 
contains  several  hints,"  says  Sir  Walter  Scott,  "  which 
have  been  adopted  by  succeeding  statesmen,  and  some  of 
which  are  worthy  of  still  more  attention  than  they  have 
received."     If  an  "increase"  of  the  robber  class  actually 


274  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

took  place  at  the  time,  as  the  title  indicates,  matters  must 
have  been  bad  indeed ;  for,  about  an  age  earlier,  so  sadly 
were  the  roads  that  approach  the  metropolis  infested  by 
highwaymen,  as  to  be  scarce  at  all  passable  by  the  solitary 
traveller.  "Whatever  might  be  the  way  in  which  a  jour- 
ney was  performed,"  says  Macaulay,  "  the  travellers,  unless 
they  were  numerous  and  well  armed,  ran  considerable  risk 
of  being  stopped  and  plundered.  The  mounted  highway- 
man, a  marauder  known  to  our  generation  only  by  books, 
was  to  be  found  on  every  main  road.  The  waste  tracts 
which  lay  on  the  main  routes  near  London  were  especially 
haunted  by  plunderers  of  this  class.  Hounslow  Heath,  on 
the  great  western  road,  and  Finchley  Common,  on  the 
great  northern  road,  were  perhaps  the  most  celebrated  of 
these  spots.  The  Cambridge  scholars  trembled  when  they 
approached  Epping  Forest,  even  in  broad  daylight;  and 
seamen  who  had  just  been  paid  off  at  Chatham  were  often 
compelled  to  deliver  their  purses  on  Gadshill."  Long  after 
the  times  that  Macaulay  describes,  long  after  the  times  of 
Fielding  too,  even  in  country  districts,  the  law  served  but 
imperfectly  to  protect  the  peaceable  subject  from  the 
housebreaker  and  the  highwayman.  Cowper's  graphic 
description,  written  in  the  year  1783,  must  be  familiar  to 
all  our  readers :  — 

"  Now,  ere  yoa  sleep, 
See  that  your  polished  arms  be  primed  with  care. 
And  draw  the  night-bolt:  ruffians  are  abroad. 
And  the  first  'larum  of  the  cock's  shrill  throat 
May  prove  a  trumpet  summoning  your  ear 
To  horrid  sounds  of  hostile  feet  within. 
Even  daylight  has  its  dangers ;  and  the  walk 
Through  pathless  wastes  and  woods,  unconscious  once 
Of  other  tenants  than  melodious  birds 
Or  harmless  flocks,  is  hazardous  and  bold." 

But  a  gradual  improvement  took  place,  especially  in  the 
larger  towns.  The  great  increase  of  newspapers,  which 
recorded  every  act  of  violence  and  outrage  as  it  occuiTed, 


THE   FELONS   OF   THE   COUNTRY.  275 

and  set  the  whole  country  on  its  guard,  —  that  quickenhig 
of  the  postal  arrangements  which  soon  overtook  and  dis- 
tanced the  culprit  in  his  escape,  —  the  admirable  organi- 
zation of  the  police,  effected  by  the  act  of  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
—  above  all,  the  outlet  furnished  through  the  discovery  of 
Botany  Bay,  and  its  appropriation  as  a  penal  colony  for 
the  country,  —  had  all  their  effect  in  producing  a  favorable 
change ;  and,  while  a  great  increase  took  place  in  the  list 
of  minor  offences,  —  a  consequence  of  the  growth  of  what 
are  known  as  the  lapsed  classes,  —  crimes  of  blacker  dye, 
perpetrated  by  professional  felons,  became  considerably 
more  rare  and  less  atrocious  than  in  an  earlier  time.  Dur- 
ing the  first  two  decades  of  the  present  century  a  few 
terrible  cases  occurred.  The  Williams  murders  of  1812, 
and  the  general  panic  they  occasioned,  must  be  remembered 
by  some  of  our  older  readers  ;  and  such  as  belong  to  a 
later  generation  may  find  their  startling  effects  reproduced 
in  some  degree  by  the  vigorous  pen  of  De  Quincey,  in  his 
grim  but  singularly  powerful  essay,  "  Murder  considered  as 
one  of  the  Fine  Arts."  The  murder  by  the  M'Keans,  also 
permanently  recorded  by  the  same  graphic  writer,  belongs 
to  a  somewhat  later  period,  and  is  marked  by  similar  cir- 
cumstances of  atrocity.  We  do  not  refer  to  the  Burke 
and  Bishop  murders,  which  may  be  considered  as  wholly 
sni  generis  /  nor  yet  to  those  of  the  Thurtle  or  Tawell 
class,  which  occurred  in  private  society,  and  lay  outside 
what  may  be  regarded  as  the  professional  pale.  Within 
that  pale  great  improvement  took  place ;  robbery  accom- 
panied by  violence  became  rare,  and  robbery  accompanied 
by  murder  rarer  still.  The  streets  and  lanes  of  our  larger 
cities  might  be  traversed  in  comparative  safety  at  all  hours  ; 
the  great  bulk  of  offences  committed  against  the  person 
were  offences  committed  under  the  influence  of  drink,  — 
quite  a  bad  enough  symptom  of  the  condition  and  morals 
of  a  great  portion  of  the  humbler  classes,  but  in  several 
material  respects  greatly  preferable  to  that  class  of  offences 
against  the  person  which  obtained  in  the  days  of  Fielding, 


276  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

and  respecting  which  he  had  to  conduct,  as  has  been  said, 
five  examinations  in  a  single  week.  The  means,  too,  hy 
which  the  darker  class  of  crimes  has  been  suppressed  in 
our  own  days  are  equally  in  advance  of  those  to  which 
the  novelist  —  unrivalled,  as  his  writings  show,  in  his 
knowledge  of  the  worse  traits  and  specimens  of  human 
nature  —  had  been  compelled  to  have  recourse  a  century 
ago.  In  the  introduction  of  the  "  Voyage  to  Lisbon,"  he 
relates  that,  when  consulted  by  the  Premier  of  the  day, 
the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  respecting  the  best  mode  of  put- 
ting down  the  robbers  and  murderers  of  the  metropolis, 
he  could  advise  nothing  better  than  the  employment  of 
money  in  corrupting  their  associates.  "I  had  the  most 
eager  desire,"  we  find  him  saying,  "  of  demolishing  these 
gangs  of  villains  and  cut-throats,  which  I  was  sure  of  ac- 
complishing the  moment  I  was  enabled  to  pay  a  fellow  who 
had  undertaken  for  a  small  sum  to  betray  them  into  the 
hands  of  a  set  of  thief-takers  whom  I  had  enlisted  into  the 
service,  all  men  of  known  and  approved  fidelity  and  intre- 
pidity. After  some  weeks,"  he  adds,  "  the  money  was  paid 
at  the  treasury  ;  and  within  a  few  days  after  two  hundred 
pounds  of  it  had  come  into  my  hands,  the  whole  gang  of 
cut-throats  were  entirely  dispersed,  seven  of  the  thieves 
were  in  actual  custody,  and  the  rest  driven,  some  out  of 
the  town  and  others  out  of  the  kingdom." 

For  the  last  six  or  eight  years,  however,  there  has  cer- 
tainly been  no  improvement  of  the  nature  which  took  place 
in  the  criminal  records  of  the  country  during  the  previous 
quarter  of  a  century ;  on  the  contrary,  the  course  has  been 
retrograde  ;  and  at  the  present  time  we  seem  as  if  passing 
to  the  state  of  matters  which  obtained  during  the  days  of 
Justice  Fielding  and  Jonathan  Wild.  Murders  have  been 
committed  during  the  last  month  of  the  old  mercenary 
class,  that,  in  circumstances  of  merciless  barbarity,  do  not 
yield  to  any  in  the  "Newgate  Calendar;"  assaults  on  the 
person  for  the  same  object  have  rendered  the  new  term 
garrotting  a  completely  naturalized  one  of  familiar  use  ; 


THE  FELONS  OF  THE  COUNTRY.         277 

and  housebreakings  on  a  large  scale  have  become  such 
common  events  that  almost  every  succeeding  newspaper 
records  their  occurrence.  In  some  cases  the  respectable 
trader  goes  to  his  bed  square  with  the  world,  and  rises  in 
the  morning  a  ruined  man.  And  yet  never  was  there  a 
time  when  certain  of  the  causes  which  formed  so  powerful 
a  check  on  crime  in  the  past  were  so  influentially  in  opera- 
tion as  now.  Never  were  there  so  many  newspapers  to 
spread  over  the  country  the  intelligence  of  every  offence  in 
all  its  details,  and  to  direct  public  attention  on  the  offend- 
ers ;  never  was  there  a  time  when  such  intelligence  could 
be  transmitted  with  even  a  tithe  of  the  present  speed,  — 
the  act  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  has  certainly  not  been  suffered 
to  foil  into  desuetude  ;  and  never  had  the  country  a  more 
active  or  intelligent  magistracy.  What,  then,  can  be  the 
more  than  neutralizing  causes  of  such  various  circumstances 
of  advantage,  under  which  crime  of  what  we  have  termed 
the  professional  class  is  so  obviously  on  the  increase  ?  The 
question  is  easily  answered.  The  causes  are  two.  In  the 
first  place,  that  change  through  which  Britain  no  longer 
possesses  penal  colonies  has  led  to  a  great  accumulation  of 
criminals  in  the  country ;  and  it  has  got,  in  consequence, 
into  the  unhealthy  condition  of  living  subjects  when  the 
natural  evacuations  are  stopped ;  and  in  the  second  place, 
the  ticket- of-leave  system  —  a  system  essentially  false  in 
principle  in  the  circumstances  —  has  greatly  exaggerated 
the  evil.  We  cannot,  however,  agree  with  those  who  give 
a  paramount  place  to  the  latter  cause.  Were  it  to  be  abol- 
ished to-morrow,  and  criminals  imprisoned  for  the  shorter 
periods,  —  whether  five,  seven,  or  fourteen  years,  —  in  no 
case  released  until  the  close  of  the  legitimate  terms  re- 
corded in  their  sentences,  —  the  master  evil  would  still 
remain.  The  felon,  now  let  loose  upon  the  public  at  the 
end  of  some  two  or  three  years,  would  in  the  other  case 
not  be  let  loose  upon  it  until  the  end  of  five  years,  or  of 
seven,  or  fourteen  ;  but  ultimately  he  wovld  be  let  loose 
upon  it ;  and,  even  if  inclined  to  live  honestly,  he  would 
24 


278  POLITICAL  A-ND   SOCIAL. 

have  quite  as  little  chance  of  procuring  the  necessary  era 
ployment  at  the  end  of  the  longer  as  of  the  shorter  term. 
There  is  only  one  way  in  which  the  master  evil  in  the  case 
is  to  be  remedied.  The  old  means  of  evacuation  must,  at 
whatever  cost,  be  procured.  Britain,  whatever  difficulties 
may  lie  in  the  way,  must  again  have  i-ecourse  to  the  scheme 
of  penal  colonies,  or  both  life  and  property  must  continue 
to  remain  insecure.  And,  though  difficulties  do  lie  in  the 
way,  we  do  not  see  that  they  are  by  any  means  insurmount- 
able. Half  the  trouble  which  our  ancestors  had  in  extirpat- 
ing the  native  wolves  would  suffice  to  rid  us  of  a  greatly 
more  formidable  class  of  wild  beasts,  —  the  incorrigiblo 
criminals.  It  is  surely  not  at  all  necessary  that  a  penal 
colony  should  be  a  paradise.  It  was  no  advantage,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  much  the  reverse,  that  during  even  the 
healthiest  state  of  the  country  the  incipient  felon  looked 
with  longing  eyes  on  the  representations  of  New  South 
Wales  given  in  the  print-shop  windows,  and  then  went  off 
to  qualify  himself  by  some  bold  act  for  a  free  passage.  A 
penal  colony  should  be  simply  a  coimtry  in  which  the  dis- 
charged felon  could  earn  his  bread  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow^ 
just  as  our  humbler  people  do  at  home,  and  in  which  the 
circumstances  of  the  community  would  be  such  as  to  ren- 
der the  life  of  the  marauder  not  only  a  more  dangerous, 
but  also  a  more  toilsome  and  difficult  one  than  that  of  the 
honest  worker  who  labored  fairly  for  his  bread.  And  a 
colony  of  this  character  ought  not  to  be  difficult  to  find. 
The  country  once  heard  a  great  deal  about  the  Falkland 
Islands.  Rather  more  than  eighty  years  ago  (1771),  it  wa» 
on  the  eve  of  entering,  mainly  on  their  account,  into  a  war 
with  France ;  and  on  that  occasion  Johnson  wrote  his  fa- 
mous tract  to  dissuade  Britain  from  the  contest,  by  showing 
that  the  islands  were  of  really  little  value,  and  would  be 
dearly  purchased  at  such  a  price.  But  now  that  all  dispute 
regarding  them  has  ceased,  —  for  the  last  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury they  have  been  in  the  uninterrupted  possession  of 
this  country,  —  they  might  be  found  very  valuable  as  a 


THE  FELONS  OF  THE  COUNTRY.         279 

penal  colony.  They  have  an  area  of  about  thirteen  thou- 
sand square  miles;  their  mean  temperature  during  the  year 
is  exactly  that  of  Edinburgh,  with  summers,  however,  a 
little  warmer,  and  winters  a  little  colder,  than  our  Scotch 
ones ;  their  surface  is  green ;  the  grass-lands  are  peculiarly 
luxuriant,  and  form  such  a  paradise  for  cattle  that  the  tame 
breeds  are  becoming  wild  in  the  interior,  and  promise  to 
be  very  numerous  ;  and  the  bays  and  sounds  which  indent 
the  coast  abound  in  fish.  Further,  so  imperfectly  are  they 
colonized,  that  though  the  exjiense  of  maintaining  thera 
costs  the  country  about  six  thousand  pounds  per  annum, 
their  entire  exports  fall  short  of  four  thousand.  In  fine, 
at  a  very  slight  sacrifice  these  islands  could  be  converted 
into  a  hopeful  penal  colony,  that  would  fully  absorb  the 
more  dangerous  criminals  of  the  country  for  a  quarter  of 
a  century  to  come. 

But  while  recognizing  the  lack  of  penal  colonies,  and 
the  consequent  accumulation  of  our  criminals  within  the 
country,  as  the  main  causes  of  that  increase  of  serious 
crime  against  both  the  person  and  property  which  has  taken 
place  during  the  last  eight  or  ten  years,  we  must  not  un- 
dervalue the  influence  of  the  other  cause,  —  that  ticket- 
of-leave  system  which  has  let  loose  so  many  dangerous 
felons  on  society  ere  half  their  terras  of  punishment  had 
expired.  The  principle  of  the  system  is  utterly  false  and 
unsolid  in  all  its  circumstances  and  details.  A  fond  mother 
was  once  heard  addressing  her  son  as  follows  :  "  Be  a 
good,  religious  boy,  my  little  Johnnie ;  fear  God,  and  honor 
your  parents  ;  and  I  will  give  you  two  pretty  red-cheeked 
apples."  Nor  is  it  difiicult  to  say  what  sort  of  a  religion 
would  be  the  eflect  of  such  a  promise.  Little  Johnnie's  two 
apples'-worth  of  the  fear  of  God  and  the  honor  of  parents 
would  be  a  very  hypocritical  fear,  and  a  very  fictitious 
honor.  And  the  ticket-of-leave  system  proceeds  wholly 
on  the  same  principle.  Be  religious  and  moral,  it  virtually 
says  to  the  convict,  for  a  given  time,  and  you  will  get, 
when  it  has  expired,  the  two  red-cheeked  apples.     It  has 


280  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

a  grand  disadvantage,  too,  over  the  scheme  of  the  fond 
mother.  She  might  no  doubt  succeed  in  making  little 
Johnnie  a  little  hypocrite  ;  but  the  two  apples,  when  made 
over  to  him,  if  really  good  ones,  might  be  productive  of 
further  hurt  to  neither  himself  nor  the  family.  Not  so  the 
premium  for  behavior  held  out  to  the  convict.  The  prof- 
fered reward  bears  simply  to  the  effect  that  he  is  to  be  let 
loose  on  society,  to  prey  upon  it  anew.  There  is  in  reality 
no  scheme  in  existence  by  which  convicts  in  the  mass  can 
be  dealt  with  as  our  paper-makers  deal  with  their  filth-be- 
grimmed  rags.  We  cannot  put  them  in  at  the  one  end  of 
a  penitentiary  in  the  soiled  state,  and  take  them  out  white 
and  pure  at  the  other.  True,  we  must  not  limit  the  grace 
of  God.  It  is  just  possible,  however  improbable,  that  lit- 
tle Johnnie,  notwithstanding  the  sad  stumbling-block  of 
the  two  apples,  or  that  a  convict,  notwithstanding  the 
greatly  sadder  stumbling-block  of  the  ticket-of-leave  system, 
might  be  in  reality  converted ;  but  neither  on  the  apple 
scheme  nor  any  other  will  there  be  any  wholesale  conver- 
sions of  either  the  little  Johnnies  or  the  greater  felons  of 
the  country.  Regarded  as  a  whole,  the  latter  will  enter 
the  penitentiaries  as  felons,  and  as  felons  they  will  leave 
them  ;  but  if,  by  seeming  to  be  religious,  and  by  exercising 
a  degree  of  self-constraint  in  a  place  in  which  there  is  ex- 
ceedingly little  to  tempt,  they  will  have  the  prospect  held 
out  to  them  of  quitting  their  place  of  confinement  at  an 
early  day,  the  men  of  strong  wills  and  of  self-control  among 
them  —  always  the  more  dangerous  class  —  will  not  fail 
to  conform  to  the  conditions.  And  thus  the  picked  felons 
will  be  ever  and  anon  let  loose  long  ere  their  time,  to  rob 
in  order  that  they  may  live,  and  to  murder  in  order  that 
their  robberies  may  be  concealed.  In  the  brief  passage 
which  we  have  quoted  from  Sir  Walter's  "  Life  of  Field- 
ing," we  find  him  remarking,  that  one  of  the  less  known 
publications  of  the  old  magistrate  and  novelist  contained 
hints,  some  of  which  had  been  adopted,  and  "  some  of 
which  are  worthy  of  more  attention  than  they  have  re^ 


THE  FELONS   OF  THE   COUNTRY.  281 

ceived."  And  we  would  reckon  among  the  latter  the 
hints  contained  in  the  chapter  entitled,  "  Of  the  Encour- 
agement given  to  Robbers  by  frequent  Pardons."  Pardons 
at  the  time — a  consequence  of  the  extreme  severity  of 
the  English  criminal  code  —  were  very  numerous  and  very 
capricious,  though  neither  so  numerous  nor  so  capricious 
as  the  ticket-of-leave  system  has  rendered  them  now.  And 
what  were  the  effects  which  they  produced  ?  Simply  this, 
as  determined  by  a  singularly  shrewd  and  sagacious  man, 
who  knew  more  of  the  matter  than  any  one  else,  that  from 
the  hope  of  impunity  which  they  created,  they  hanged  ten 
times  more  felons  than  they  saved  from  the  gallows,  and 
greatly  increased  the  amount  of  crime. 
24* 


282  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 


XV. 

THE  LEGISLATIVE  COURT. 

"On  the  22d  of  Aprile"  (1532), says  Calderwood,  in  his 
"Ecclesiastical  History,"  so  recently  published,  for  the  first 
time,  by  the  Wodrow  Society,  "  the  Collegde  of  the  Judges 
was  established  in  Edinburgh,"  "for  judgment  of  pecuni- 
all  and  civil  causes."  "  In  the  beginning,"  continues  the 
historian,  "  many  things  were  profitablie  devised  by  them, 
and  justice  ministered  with  equitie.  But  the  event  an- 
swered not  the  expectatioun  of  men ;  for,  seeing  in  Scotland 
there  be  almost  no  lawes  except  the  acts  of  Parliament, 
whereof  manie  are  not  perpetuall  but  temporarie,  and  the 
judges  hinder  what  they  may  the  making  of  such  lawes, 
the  goods  of  all  men  are  committed  to  the  arbitriement 
and  decisioun  of  fyfteen  men  that  have  perpetuall  power, 
which,  in  truth,  is  but  tyranicall  impyre,  seeing  their  own 
arbitriements  stand  for  lawe." 

Such  was  the  objection  raised  by  Calderwood  two  hun- 
dred years  ago  to  the  constitution  and  practice  of  the 
Court  of  Session,  at  a  time  when  no  case  of  harassing  and 
irritating  collision  with  the  ecclesiastical  courts  had  arisen 
to  disturb  the  equanimity  or  cloud  the  judgment  of  the 
shrewd  old  churchman.  Such,  too,  was  the  decision  pro- 
nounced regarding  it  nearly  a  century  earlier  by  Buchanan, 
whom,  in  this  significant  and  very  pregnant  passage,  the 
ecclesiastical  chronicler  has  been  content  closely  to  follow, 
—  so  closely,  indeed,  that  the  passage  may  be  deemed 
rather  a  translation  than  a  piece  of  original  writing.  The 
court  was  comparatively  in  its  infancy  —  an  institution 
of  about  fifty  years'  standing  —  when  it  was  characterized 
by  the  older  historian  as  an  arbitrary  erection,  opposed  in 


THE   LEGISLATIVE   COURT.  283 

its  constitution  to  the  very  genius  of  freedom.  And  why  ? 
It  is  according  to  the  genius  of  freedom  that  a  people  be 
governed  by  laws  which  they  themselves  have  made.  The 
principle  is  at  once  so  obvious  and  fundamental  that  there 
is  scarce  a  writer  on  civil  liberty  who  has  not  laid  it  down 
as  his  very  basis.  And  it  would  certainly  be  no  easy  mat- 
ter to  conceive  of  aught  in  more  direct  and  hostile  antag- 
onism to  such  a  proposition,  than  the  proposition  that  a 
people  should  be  governed,  not  by  laws  of  their  own 
making,  but  by  the  legislative  decisions  of  some  fifteen 
irresponsible  judges,  chosen  by  the  monarch  to  "have  per- 
petuall  power,"  and  "  whose  arbitriements  should  stand 
for  lawe." 

Such  were  some  of  the  grounds  of  Buchanan's  judgment 
on  the  "CoUedge  of  Judges;"  and  they  serve  to  demonstrate 
the  peculiar  sagacity  of  the  man,  —  a  sagacity  altogether 
wondei'ful  when  we  take  into  account  the  early  period  in 
which  he  flourished.  His  reflections  on  the  barbarous  tor- 
ments to  which  the  assassins  of  James  I.  were  subjected 
has  been  instanced  by  Dugald  Stewart,  in  his  "Disserta- 
tion on  the  Rise  of  Metaphysical  Science,"  as  fraught  with 
philosophy  of  a  deeper  reach  than  can  be  found  in  the 
works  of  any  other  winter  of  so  early  a  period.  We  would 
place  over  against  it  —  as  scarce  less  vivaciously  instinct 
with  the  philosophic  spirit,  and  as  even  a  still  better  ex- 
ample of  that  discriminating  ability  in  the  political  field 
which  enabled  him  to  take  his  place  as  an  asserter  of  the 
just  principles  of  civil  liberty  so  mightily  in  advance  of  his 
age  —  his  remark  on  the  constitution  of  the  Court  of  Ses- 
sion. It  serves  at  once  to  remind  us  of  the  eulogium  of 
Sir  James  Macintosh  and  to  justify  it.  "  The  science  which 
teaches  the  rights  of  man,"  says  this  elegant  and  powerful 
writer,  "  the  eloquence  which  kindles  the  spirit  of  free- 
dom, had  for  ages  been  buried  with  the  other  monuments 
of  the  wisdom  and  relics  of  the  genius  of  antiquity. 
But  the  revival  of  letters  first  unlocked  only  to  a  few 
the  sacred  fountain.      The  necessary  labors  of  criticism 


284  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

and  lexicography  occupied  the  earlier  scholars,  and  some 
time  elapsed  before  the  spirit  of  antiquity  was  transferred 
into  its  admirers.  The  first  man  of  that  period  who  uni- 
ted elegant  learning  to  original  and  masculine  thought 
was  Buchanan  ;  and  he,  too,  seems  to  have  been  the  first 
scholar  who  caught  from  the  ancients  the  noble  flame  of 
republican  enthusiasm.  This  praise  is  merited  by  his  neg- 
lected though  incomparable  tract,  'De  Jure  Regni,'  in 
which  the  principles  of  popular  politics  and  the  maxims 
of  a  free  government  are  delivered  with  a  precision,  and 
enforced  with  an  energy,  which  no  former  age  had  equalled 
and  no  succeeding  has  surpassed." 

A  history  of  the  many  decisions  of  the  Court  of  Session 
that,  according  to  Buchanan  and  Calderwood,  are  legisla- 
tive^  not  judicial,  —  that,  instead  of  explaining  existing 
law,  are  in  reality  creations  of  laws  which  have  no  existence 
save  in  the  decisions  themselves,  —  would  form  a  very  cu- 
rious and  a  very  useful  work.  It  would  be  well,  surely,  to 
know  how  much  of -the  national  code  is  the  production  of 
the  "fyfteen  men  that  have  perpetuall  power,  and  whose 
arbiti'iements  stand  for  lawe,"  and  how  much  of  it  has  been 
made  by  the  people  themselves,  through  the  people's  rep- 
resentatives. It  would  be  at  least  particularly  well  to 
know  how  much  of  what  is  practically  the  national  code 
is  not  merely  law  created  by  the  "  fyfteen  men  "  where  no 
law  existed  before,  but  law  created  by  them  in  direct  op- 
position to  existing  laws,  —  law  directly  subversive  of  the 
law  made  by  the  people.  Nor  can  there  be  any  doubt  that 
the  time  is  coming  when  such  a  work  will  be  imperatively 
called  for  by  the  public.  Scotland,  through  the  decisions 
of  this  court,  is  on  the  eve  of  being  placed  in  circumstances 
exactly  similar  to  those  in  which  the  disastrous  wars  of  five 
hundred  years  have  placed  Ireland.  The  religion  of  the 
country  is  on  the  eve  of  being  disestablished,  —  disestab- 
lished, too,  at  a  time  when  in  a  state  of  greater  vigor,  and 
more  truly  popular,  than  at  any  other  period  during  the 
last  hundred  years ;  and  as  revolutions  never  occur  with- 


THE    LRGISLATIVK   COTTRT.  285 

out  at  least  awakening  a  spirit  of  inquiry  regarding  the 
causes  which  have  produced  them,  the  period  must  be 
inevitably  at  hand  when  the  legislative  decisions  of  the 
Court  of  Session  shall  be  examined,  and  that  with  no  ordi- 
nary degree  of  attention,  in  the  light  of  Calderwood  and 
Buchanan. 

We  have  specified  on  several  occasions  decisions  which, 
in  their  character  as  precedents,  have  actually  become  law, 

—  that  traverse,  and  practically  abrogate,  the  statutory 
law  of  the  kingdom.  We  adduced  one  very  striking  in- 
stance when  setting  against  each  other  the  existing  mode 
of  provision  for  the  building  and  repairing  of  parish 
churches  as  settled  by  decision,  and  the  diametrically  op- 
posite mode  as  arranged  and  provided  by  enactment. 
According  to  statute,  "  the  parishioners  of  parish  kirks  " 
are  charged  and  empowered  to  "  elect  and  chuse  certain 
of  the  most  honest  qualified  men  within  their  parochins," 
to  tax  the  parish  for  the  expenses  of  the  necessary  erection 
or  repair ;  and  in  the  event  of  the  parishioners  "  failing  or 
delaying  to  elect  or  chuse,  through  sloth  or  unwillingness, 
the  power  of  making  such  choice  or  election  of  such  honest 
qualified  men  falls  to  the  ecclesiastical  authorities."  Such 
is  the  enacted  statutory  law  on  this  head,  —  the  people's 
law.    But  what  is  the  actual  law  of  precedent  in  the  case, 

—  the  law  of  "  the  fyfteen  ?  "  That  any  such  election  "  of 
honest  men  "  would  be  altogether  illegal ;  that  so  far  are 
the  parishioners  or  ecclesiastical  authorities  from  possessing 
any  such  right  of  election,  that,  even  were  they  to  make  a 
voluntary  contribution  among  themselves  for  the  repair  or 
improvement  of  the  parish  church,  they  could  be  legally  pre- 
vented from  lifting  a  tool  upon  the  building ;  that,  in  short, 
the  whole  matter  of  erecting,  repairing,  improving,  is  not 
in  the  hands  of  the  parishioners  or  the  ecclesiastical  author- 
ities, where  statute  has  placed  it,  but  exclusively  in  hands 
in  which  statute  never  placed  it,  —  in  the  hands  of  the 
heritors.  How  very  striking  an  illustration  of  the  sagacity 
of  Buchanan  ! 


286  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

We  need  scarce  refer  to  the  still  more  striking  illustration 
which  our  present  ecclesiastical  struggle  furnishes,  —  an 
illustration  which,  we  have  said,  will  scarce  fail  of  being 
appreciated  over  the  whole  empire  by  and  by.  We  shall 
venture,  however,  on  one  remark.  It  is  not  according  to 
the  nature  of  things  that  the  decisions  of  the  Court  of 
Session  should  traverse  statutory  enactments,  which  have 
originated  amid  the  ebullitions  of  strong  popular  feeling, 
and  are  in  reality  embodiments  of  the  popular  will,  so  long 
as  these  enactments  are  recent,  and  the  impulse  to  which 
they  owed  their  existence  is  still  predominant  in  the  coun- 
try as  a  moving  power.  Nothing  less  probable,  for  in- 
stance, than  that  the  court  should  have  reversed  any  of 
the  more  broad  and  obvious  provisions  of  the  Reform  Bill 
when  Earl  Grey's  ministry  were  still  in  office,  or  any  of 
the  more  thoroughly  understood  clauses  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Emancipation  Act  ere  it  had  attained  to  a  twelve- 
month's standing.  The  state  of  these  measures  as  recent  — 
as  measures  which  had  agitated  the  whole  country  —  whose 
meanings  all  the  people  understood,  not  so  much  in  their 
character  as  statutes  as  in  their  character  as  embodiments 
of  either  their  own  will  or  the  will  of  the  Roman  Catholics 
of  Ireland  —  would  have  prevented  most  effectually  any 
judicial  reversal  of  the  main  principles  which  they  involved. 
The  Court  of  Session  might  as  safely  declare  that  Ernest 
of  Hanover,  not  Victoria,  is  the  monarch  of  these  realms, 
as  that  ten-pound  freeholders  have  no  legal  right  to  vote 
in  the  election  of  members  of  Parliament,  or  that  at  least 
ten-pound  freeholders  have  no  legal  right  to  vote  in  the 
election  ol  members  of  Parliament  who  are  Roman  Catho- 
lics. The  character  of  such  acts,  as  recent,  restricts  our 
judges  to  the  exercise  of  their  purely  judicial  functions. 
They  cannot,  they  dare  not,  reverse  them.  Taking  this 
obvious  principle  into  account,  —  and  it  is  certainly  not 
easy  to  say  how  any  principle  could  be  more  obvious,  --it 
is  of  vast  importance  to  ascertain  the  opinions  which  our 
judges  held  regarding  the  powers  and  jurisdiction  of  the 


THE   LEGISLATIVE    COURT.  287 

church  at  a  time  when  both  the  Revolution  and  the  Union 

were  events  as  fresh  in  men's  memories  as  the  Reform  Bill 

and  the  Emancipation  Act  are  now.     Hence,  in  part,  the 

great  value  of  those  views  and  sentiments  of  our  older 

lawyers  on  the  point,  to  which  we  have  so  often  referred. 

Lord  Cullen,  with  whose  admirable  tract  on  patronage  most 

of  our  readers  must  be  acquainted,  was  a  grown  man  at 

the  time  of  the  Revolution.     His  son,  Lord  Prestongrange, 

must  have  remembered  the  Union  as  the  great  event  of 

Scotland  in  that  age.     The  Lord  President  Dundas  and 

the  Lord  President  Forbes  were  lawyers  of  much  the  same 

standing   as   the   latter.     Kames,   Monboddo,   Dreghorn, 

were  all  reared  at  the  feet  of  these  men  ;  and  thouc^h  all 
'  .  .  .... 

of  them  could,  no  doubt,  occasionally  unite  to  their  judicial 

functions  those  legislative  powers  which  so  excited,  at  an 
earlier  period,  the  jealousy  of  Buchanan,  all  of  them  must 
have  felt  that,  regarding  the  more  palpable  conditions  of 
those  two  great  events,  the  Revolution  and  the  Union, 
they  were  at  liberty  to  exercise  their  judicial  functions 
only.  The  fundamental  conditions  of  these  events  were 
present  to  the  national  mind  as  great  living  principles  ; 
they  still  engaged  the  feelings  of  the  country;  they  still 
exercised  its  reasoning  faculties;  they  were  something 
other  than  dead  statutory  enactments  for  legislative  judges 
to  dissect  at  will,  and  on  which  spruce  half-fledged  lawyers 
might  try  their  hand  at  an  amputation,  without  the  neces- 
sity of  using  the  tourniquet.  Their  true  meaning  was  as 
thoroughly  exhibited  in  the  living  intellect  of  the  country 
as  in  the  statute-book  itself.  And  hence,  of  necessity,  the 
rectitude  of  judicial  opinion  regarding  them. 

Is  this  view  of  the  matter  in  any  degree  a  rational  one  ? 
If  so,  what  estimate  must  we  form  of  the  view  taken  by 
Lord  Cuninghame  in  his  last  note  ?  The  church  has  never 
yet  disputed  that  the  judicial  sentence  of  the  civil  court 
may  legitimately  effect  a  separation  between  her  sjnritu- 
alities  and  the  temporalities  of  the  state ;  but  this,  she 
contends,  is  the  utmost  extent  to  which  any  such  legiti- 


288  POLITICAL    AND    SOCIAL. 

mate  decision  can  effect  her;  and  in  proof  of  the  doctrine 
she  appeals  not  only  to  the  statutory  enactments  in  which 
it  is  embodied,  but  also  to  the  opinions  on  the  subject  of 
all  the  Scotch  lawyers  and  more  eminent  judges  of  the 
last  century,  —  men  who  lived  under  the  direct  influence 
of  the  immensely  important  events  by  which  the  Constitu- 
tion of  the  country  had  been  ultimately  fixed  at  the  ReV' 
olution  and  the  Union.  "  There  appears  to  be  little  doubt," 
says  his  lordship,  in  reply,  "  that  at  a  certain  period  in  the 
last  century,  when  ecclesiastical  questions  first  were  the 
subject  of  discussion  in  our  courts,  an  opinion  was  enter- 
tained by  lawyers  of  learning  and  reputation,  such  as  Lord 
Prestongrange,  Mr.  Crosbie,  and  others,  that  such  a  sepa- 
ration was  in  certain  cases  legitimate  and  competent,  and 
admitted  of  no  remedy  in  this  court.  But,  able  as  the 
persons  were,  thei/  had  not  the  benefit  of  the  anxious  and 
elaborate  arguments  which  the  questions  have  undergone  in 
modern  times,  and  which  have  thrown  a  light  on  cases  of 
this  nature  that  writers  at  no  former  period  enjoyed." 
Surely  we  may  be  permitted  to  exclaim,  "  O  unhappy  law- 
yers of  the  last  century !  — hapless  Henry  Home,  unlucky 
Duncan  Forbes,  unfortunate  Monboddo,  ill-fated  Dreg- 
horn  !  —  O  ye  Dundases,  Cullens,  Crosbies,  and  Preston- 
granges! —  why  were  ye  all  born  a  hundred  years  too 
soon?  Poor  blind  gropers  in  quest  of  truth,  men  of 
deficient  law  and  slender  intellect,  why  were  you  not  fated 
to  imbibe  wisdom  from  the  philosophic  notes  of  my  Lord 
Cuninghame,  and  to  inhale  at  once  wit  and  knowledge 
from  the  lucid  and  sparkling  speeches  of  my  Lord  Justice- 
Clerk  Hope  ?  Thou,  O  Kames !  hadst  thou  but  lived  to 
see  these  luminaries,  mightesthave  remained  unenlightened 
thyself  notwithstanding,  like  those  very  obstinate  gentle- 
men of  our  own  times,  Lords  Jeffrey  and  Moncreiff ;  but 
in  taking  measure  of  the  vast  intellectual  stature  of  oui 
Hopes  and  Cuninghames,  thou  wouldest  have  at  least  found 
it  necessary  to  introduce  into  thy  'Sketches'  one  Adam 
more,  and  he  a  giant.    And  thou,  O  Monboddo !  hadst 


THE  LEGISLATIVE   COURT.  289 

thou  but  seen  the  sort  of  persons  who  follow  in  their  train, 
thou  wouldest  surely  have  rejoiced,  whatever  else  thou 
mightest  have  done,  in  the  return  of  the  men  with  tails. 
But  ah !  unhappy  lawyers,  ye  lived  an  age  too  soon,  and 
so  must  content  yourselves  now  with  just  the  pity  of  the 
Lord  Ordinary." 

There  is  assuredly  a  time  coming  when  our  ecclesiastical 
question,  viewed  in  the  clear  light  of  history,  shall  be 
judged  one  of  the  best  possible  for  illustrating  the  charac- 
ter of  the  court  in  both  its  judicial  and  legislative  aspects. 
It  will  exhibit  the  Janus-like  head  of  this  institution,  with 
its  one  countenance  bent  tranquilly  upon  the  past  century, 
and  its  other  countenance  breathing  war  and  horror  on  the 
present.  It  will  be  seen  that  in  the  last  century,  the  coui't, 
with  regard  to  the  church,  presented  only  its  judicial 
aspect:  we  have  shown  why.  It  will  be  found  that  it  is 
the  legislative  aspect  which  it  presents  with  respect  to  the 
church  now.  And  there  will  doubtless  be  some  interest 
in  marking  the  exact  point  at  which  the  one  character  has 
been  taken  up  and  the  other  character  laid  down,  with  all 
the  vai'ious  causes  which  have  led  to  the  change.  But  the 
prejudices  and  prepossessions  of  men  interfere,  and  prevent 
the  question  from  being  one  of  the  best  possible  illustrations 
of  this  in  the  present  time.  We  have  a  case  before  us 
which  at  least  our  antagonists  will  recognize  as  happier  in 
its  application.  It  is  a  case  in  which  the  decision  arrived 
at  by  the  court  traverses  not  quite  so  palpably  the  laws  of 
the  country  as  the  fixed  laws  of  nature.  We  submitted 
to  our  readers,  rather  more  than  a  week  since,  the  report 
of  a  trial  which  had  taken  place  a  short  time  previous, 
before  the  court  in  Edinburgh,  regarding  a  right  to  the 
fishing  of  salmon  in  the  Frith  of  Dornoch,  and  which  had 
gone  against  the  defendant.  We  stated  further  that  a 
similar  case,  involving  a  similar  right  to  the  fishing  of  sal- 
mon in  the  Frith  of  Cromarty,  had  been  tried  with  a  similar 
result  a  few  years  before.  The  principles  of  both  cases 
may  be  stated  in  a  few  words.  Salmon,  according  to  the 
25 


290  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

Statutory  laws  of  Scotland,  may  be  fished  for  in  i»te  s-^t 
with  wears,  yairs,  and  other  such  fixed  machinery ;  but  it 
is  illegal  to  fish  for  them  after  this  fashion  in  rivers.  The 
statutes,  however,  which  refer  to  the  case  are  ancient  and 
brief,  and  contain  no  definition  of  what  is  river  or  what 
sea.  They  leave  the  matter  altogether  to  the  natural  sensd 
of  men.  But  not  such  the  mode  pursued  by  the  Court  of 
Session.  In  its  judicial  capacity  it  can  but  decide  that 
salmon  are  not  to  be  fished  for  in  rivers  after  a  certain 
manner  in  which  they  may  be  fished  for  in  the  sea.  In  ite 
legislative  capacity  it  sets  itself  to  say  what  is  sea  and  what 
river,  and  proves  so  eminently  happy  in  its  definition,  that' 
we  are  now  able  to  enumerate  among  the  rivers  of  Scotland 
the  Frith  of  Dornoch  and  the  Frith  of  Cromarty.  Ye& 
gentle  reader,  it  has  been  legally  declared  by  that  "infidli- 
ble  civil  court"  to  which  there  lies  an  appeal  from  all  the 
decisions  of  our  poor  "fallible  church,"  that  Scotland  pos- 
sesses two  rivers  of  considerably  greater  volume  and 
breadth  than  either  the  St.  Lawrence  or  the  Mississippi ! 
Genius  of  Buchanan !  It  is  well  that  thou,  who  didst  so 
philosophically  describe  the  Court  of  Session,  didst  describe 
also,  like  a  fine  old  poet  as  thou  wert,  the  glorious  bay  of 
Cromarty ! 

Some  of  our  readers  must  be  acquainted  with  the  pow- 
erful writing  of  Tacitus  in  his  "Life  of  Agi*icola,"  in  which 
he  describes  the  Roman  galleys  as  struggling  for  the  first 
time  with  the  tides  and  winds  of  our  northern  seas.  The 
wave  rose  sluggish  and  heavy  to  the  oars  of  the  rowers, 
and  they  saw  all  around  them,  in  the  indented  shorep 
scooped  into  far  withdrawing  arms  of  the  sea,  evidences  of 
its  ponderous  and  irresistible  fox'ce.  Buchanan  must  have 
had  the  passage  in  his  mind  when  he  drew  the  bay  of  Cro- 
marty. He  tells  us  how  "  the  waters  of  the  German  Ocean, 
opening  to  themselves  a  way  through  the  stupendous  clifis 
of  the  most  lofty  precipices,  expand  within  into  a  spacious 
basin,  afibrding  certain  refuge  against  every  tempest,  and 
in  which  the  greatest  navies  may  rest  secure  from  winds 


THE   LEGISLATIVE   COURT.  291 

and  wates."  The  Court  of  Session,  in  the  wise  exercise 
of  its  legisla^rve  functions,  reverses  the  very  basis  of  this 
description.  The  rowers  of  Agricola  must  have  been  mis- 
erably in  error:  the  old  shrewd  historian  must  have  fallen 
into  a  gross  mistAe.  The  Frith  of  Cromarty  is  not  the 
inlet  of  a  mighty  sea ;  it  is  merely  the  outlet  of  an  incon- 
siderable river.  It  is  not  an  arm  of  the  German  Ocean  ; 
it  is  simply  a  prolongation  of  the  Conon.  Prolongation  of 
the  Conon !  Why,  we  know  a  little  of  both.  We  have 
waded  a  hundred  times  mid-leg  deep  across  the  one,  and 
picked  up  the  large  brown  pearl  mussels  from  the  bottom 
without  wetting  our  sleeve  ;  we  have  guided  our  little  shal- 
lop a  thousand  times  along  the  green  depths  of  the  other, 
and  have  seen  the  long  sea-line  burying  patch  after  patch, 
as  it  hurried  downwards,  and  downwards,  and  downwards, 
till,  far  below,  the  lead  rested  in  the  darkness,  amid  shells, 
and  weeds,  and  zoophytes,  rare  indeed  so  near  the  shore,  and 
whose  proper  habitat  is  the  profound  depths  of  the  ocean. 
We  have  seen  the  river  coming  down,  red  in  flood,  with 
its  dark  whirling  eddies  and  its  patches  of  yellow  foam, 
and  then  seen  it  driven  back  by  the  tidal  wave,  within 
even  its  own  banks,  like  a  braggart  overmastered  and  struck 
down  in  his  own  dwelling.  We  have  seen,  too,  the  frith 
agitated  by  storm,  the  giant  waves  dashing  against  its 
Btately  portals,  to  the  height  of  a  hundred  feet ;  and  where 
on  earth  was  the  power  that  could  curb  or  stay  them? 
The  Frith  of  Cromarty  a  prolongation  of  the  Conon  !  Were 
the  Court  of  Session  to  put  the  Conon  in  its  pocket,  the 
Frith  of  Cromarty  would  be  in  every  respect  exactly  what 
it  is,  —  the  noble  Partus  Salutis  of  Buchanan,  —  the  wide 
ocean  bay,  in  which  the  whole  British  navy  could  ride  at 
anchor.  Is  it  not  a  cui-ious  enough  circumstance,  that 
much  about  the  same  time  in  which  the  Court  of  Session, 
in  the  due  exercise  of  its  legislative  functions,  stirred  up 
the  church  to  rebellion,  it  so  laid  down  the  law  with  re- 
spect to  the  Frith  of  Cromarty,  in  the  exercise  of  exactly 
the  same  functions,  that  it  stirred  it  up  to  rebellion  also  ? 


292  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

Yes,  it  is  a  melancholy  fact,  but  it  cannot  be  denied, 
that  this  splended  sheet  of  water  has  been  in  a  state  of 
open  rebellion  for  the  last  four  years.  In  obedience  to  its 
own  ocean  laws,  it  has  been  going  on  producing  its  own 
ocean  products, — its  prickly  sea-urchins,  its  sea-anemones, 
its  dulce,  its  tangle,  "its  roarin'  buckies,"  and  its  "dead  men's 
fingers;"  when,  like  a  good  subject,  it  should  have  been 
river-mouth  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  nor  have  ventured 
on  growing  anything  less  decidedly  fluviatile  than  a  lymnea 
or  a  cyclas,  or  a  freshwater  polypus.  It  has  been  so  utterly 
outrageous  in  some  of  its  doings,  that,  albeit  inclined  to 
mercy,  we  are  disposed  to  advise  the  court  to  deal  with  it 
somewhat  closely.  There  might  be  trouble,  perhaps,  in 
bringing  it  to  the  bar,  —  more  by  a  great  deal  than  sufficed 
to  bi-ing  the  Presbytery  of  Dunkeld  there ;  but  with  the 
precedent  of  Canute  on  record,  we  do  not  think  the  court 
would  lower  its  dignity  much  below  the  present  level  by 
just  stepping  northwards  to  rebuke  it.  It  would  be  per- 
haps well,  too,  to  select  as  the  proper  time  the  height  of  a 
stiff  nor'easter.  For  our  own  part,  we  would  be  extremely 
happy  to  furnish  the  information  necessary  to  convict, 
whether  geological  or  of  any  other  kind.  We  can  satisfac- 
torily prove,  that  no  further  back  than  last  year,  this  frith 
gave  admission,  in  utter  contempt  of  court,  to  so  vast  a 
body  of  herrings,  that  all  its  multitudinous  waves  seemed 
as  if  actually  heaving  with  life;  nay,  that  it  permitted 
them,  by  millions  and  thousands  of  millions,  to  remain  and 
spawn  within  its  precincts.  We  can  prove,  further,  that 
it  suffered  a  plump  of  whales  —  vast  of  back  and  huge  of 
fin  —  to  pursue  after  the  shoal,  rolling,  and  blowing,  and 
splashing  the  white  spray  against  the  sun ;  and  that  it 
furnished  them  with  ample  depth  and  ample  verge  for  their 
gambols,  though  the  very  smallest  of  them  was  larger 
considerably — strange  as  the  fact  may  seem — than  the 
present  Dean  of  Faculty.  Is  all  this  to  bo  suffered  ?  The 
Lords  of  Session  must  assuredly  either  bring  the  rebel  to 
its  senses,  or  be  content  to  leave  their  own  legislative 


THE  LEGISLATIVE   COURT.  293 

wisdom  sadly  in  question.  For  ourselves,  we  humbly  pro- 
pose that,  until  they  make  good  their  authority,  they  be 
provided  daily  with  a  pail  of  its  clear  fresh  water,  drawn 
from  depths  not  more  than  thirty  fathoms  from  the  sm-foce, 
and  be  left,  one  and  all,  to  make  their  toddy  out  of  the 
best  of  it  and  to  keep  the  rest  for  their  tea.  Nothing  like 
river-water  for  such  purposes,  and  the  waters  of  the  Conon 
are  peculiarly  light  and  excellent. 


XVI. 

TEE  PEACE  MEETINGS. 

It  is  indisputable  that  peace  societies  are  becoming  of 
importance  enough  to  constitute  one  of  the  peculiar  fea- 
tures of  the  time.  We  learn  from  Sir  Charles  Lyell'a 
recent  work  of  travels  in  the  United  States,  that  they 
appear  to  be  telling  on  the  American  mind,  albeit  naturally 
a  war-breathing  mind,  combative  in  its  propensities  and 
fiery  in  its  elements.  The  late  peace  meetings  at  Paris, 
London,  Birmingham,  and  Manchester,  seem  to  have  been 
at  once  very  largely  attended  and  animated  by  the  enthu- 
uasm  of  a  young  and  growing  cause;  and  news])apers  such 
^s  the  "Times,"  the  "Chronicle,"  the  "Herald,"  and  the 
"*  Post,"  and  periodicals  such  as  the  "  Quarterly  Review," 
*>vidently  deem  the  movement,  of  which  they  are  a  result, 
Jbrmidable  enough  to  justify  the  attempt  to  write  it  down, 
(t  is  certain,  too,  that  the  substratum  of  right  feeling  in 
which  the  movement  has  originated,  and  which  it  repre- 
sents in  a  rather  exaggerated  form,  is  vastly  broader  and 
more  extensive  than  the  movement  itself.  There  are 
many  thousands  both  in  Britain  and  America,  and  not  a 
^ew  in  France  and  Germany,  whose  judgments  maybe  not 
25* 


294  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

at  all  satisfied  by  the  expedients  through  which  the  peace 
societies  propose  putting  an  end  to  national  wars,  that  yet 
share  deeply  in  that  general  dislike  of  war  itself  which  is 
happily  so  marked  a  characteristic  of  the  age. 

There  is  nothing  positively  new  in  what  may  be  termed 
the  main  or  central  idea  of  the  existing  peace  associations, 
namely,  adjustment  of  national  differences  by  arbitration, 
not  arms.  The  true  novelty  presented  lies  in  the  fact  that 
an  idea  restricted  in  the  past  to  but  single  minds  should 
now  be  operative  in  the  minds  of  thousands.  The  reader 
may  find  in  the  works  of  Rousseau  a  treatise,  originated 
by  the  Abbe  de  St.  Pierre,  but  edited  and  remodelled  by 
the  philosopher  of  Geneva,  entitled  a  "  Project  for  a  Per- 
petual Peace,"  in  which  the  expedient  of  a  great  European 
Court  of  Arbitration  for  national  differences  is  elaborately 
developed.  We  question,  indeed,  whether  any  member 
of  the  peace  societies  of  the  present  day  has  presented  to 
his  fellows,  or  the  public  generally,  the  master  idea  of 
these  institutions  in  so  artistic  and  plausible  a  form  as 
that  in  which  it  was  submitted  to  the  world  by  Rousseau 
considerably  more  than  eighty  years  ago.  But  though 
it  attracted  some  degree  of  notice  among  the  rulers  of 
nations,  it  failed  to  attract  anywhere  the  notice  of  the 
ruled,  —  that  class  of  which  the  great  bulk  of  nations  are 
composed ;  nor,  perhaps,  are  all  the  members  of  peace 
societies  aware  how  nearly  it  was  realized  at  one  time, 
and  how  it  yet  failed  entirely,  notwithstanding  its  plausi- 
bility, to  work  for  any  good  purpose. 

Nations  can,  of  course,  only  act  through  their  govern- 
ments; and  of  the  European  governments  in  the  days 
of  Rousseau,  the  greater  number  were  arbitrary  in  their 
constitution.  And  in  forming  his  Court  of  Arbitration, 
he  had  of  course  to  admit  as  its  members,  governments 
represented  by  monarchs  possessed  of  irresponsible  power, 
such  as  the  Kings  of  France,  Spain,  Portugal,  Prussia,  Na- 
ples, and  Sardinia,  and  the  Emperors  of  Austria  and  Russia. 
He  had  no  other  materials  of  which  to  forai  his  General 


TETB   PEACE   MEETINGS.  295 

Arbitration  Court.  Of  the  nineteeen  European  states  in 
his  list  of  arbiters,  twelve  were  despotic,  and  the  larger 
half  of  the  remainder  nearly  so;  and  yet,  in  order  to  secure 
the  desiderated  blessing  of  peace,  he  had  to  lay  it  down  as 
a  fundamental  rule,  that  each  state  should  be  maintained 
by  all  the  others  in  its  internal  rights  and  powers,  and  that 
its  territories,  at  the  time  of  the  union,  should  be  guaran- 
teed to  it  entire.  On  other  principles  no  union  of  gov- 
ernments could  have  taken  place.  To  put  down  war  was 
the  object  of  his  proposed  confederation,  —  internal  as  cer- 
tainly as  foi-eign  war ;  for  of  what  use  would  a  peace  as- 
sociation be  under  which  there  could  arise  such  a  war  as 
that  which  raged  between  Great  Britain  and  its  American 
colonies,  or  between  Austria  and  Hungary,  or  as  that  which 
deluged  the  streets  of  Paris  with  blood  ?  Nay,  under  a 
peace  association  composed  of  despotic  and  semi-despotic 
governments,  no  such  invasion  of  one  country  by  the  troops 
of  another  could  have  taken  place  as  that  of  England  by 
William  III.,  which  produced  the  Revolution  of  1688. 
Rousseau's  project,  if  practicable,  would  have  secured  peace, 
but  it  would  have  also,  o"  necessity,  arrested  progress.  It 
would  have  cursed  the  world  with  a  torpid,  unwholesome 
quiet,  a  thousand  times  less  friendly  to  the  best  interests 
of  humanity  than  that  mingled  state  of  alternate  peace  and 
war  under  which,  with  all  its  disadvantages,  the  human 
species  have  been  slowly  rising  in  the  scale  of  intelligence, 
and  securing  for  themselves  constitutional  rights  and  equal 
laws.  Nor  were  there  wanting  men  among  the  rulers  of 
the  world  shrewd  enough  to  see  that  such  was  the  real 
character  of  the  scheme  ;  and  it  was  with  rulers,  not  sub- 
jects, that  that  attempt  originated  to  which  we  have  re- 
ferred, to  convert  it  from  an  idea  into  a  fact. 

A  fierce  and  long  protracted  European  war  had  just 
come  to  a  close,  —  a  war  productive  of  greater  waste  of 
blood  and  treasure  than  any  other  of  modern  times,  — 
when  three  great  monarchs  met  at  Paris  to  originate  a 
peace    society    on    nearly   the    principles    of   Rousseau. 


296  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

These  were  Alexander  of  Russia,  Francis  of  Austria,  and 
Frederick  William  of  Prussia.  Lord  Castlereagh,  as  the 
representative  of  his  country,  was  cognizant  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  association,  and  warmly  approved  of  them  ; 
but  it  was  found  that  the  forms  of  the  British  Constitution 
were  such  as  to  prevent  the  King  of  England  from  becom- 
ing a  member.  The  document  which  formed  the  basis  of 
the  confederation  was  published  ;  and  it  was  found,  as 
might,  indeed,  be  expected  from  most  Christian  princes,  to 
be  of  a  greatly  higher  tone  than  that  which  marked  the 
project  of  Kousseau.  It  commenced  with  an  announce- 
ment of  the  intentions  of  the  subscribing  parties  to  act  for 
the  future  on  the  principles  of  the  gospel,  defined  to  be 
those  of  justice,  Christian  charity,  and  peace.  Then  fol- 
lowed three  articles,  introduced  by  the  scriptural  command 
to  all  men  to  consider  one  another  as  brethren,  which  were 
to  the  effect,  first,  that  the  three  contracting  princes  should 
remain  united  to  each  other  by  the  bonds  of  a  true  and 
indissoluble  fraternity  ;  second,  that  they  should  conduct 
themselves  to  their  subjects  and  armies  as  the  fathers  of 
families  ;  and,  third,  that  all  other  powers  should  be  in- 
vited to  join  with  them  in  the  confederacy.  The  scheme 
was  hailed  throughout  Europe  as  the  precursor  of  a 
better  state  of  things  than  the  world  had  yet  seen ;  and 
liberal  politicians  everywhere,  and  more  especially  in  Ger- 
many, were  filled  with  the  most  sanguine  expectations  of 
happy  results.  Most  of  the  European  princes  became  mem- 
bers of  this  magnificent  peace  society ;  and  England,  though 
precluded  from  formally  joining  itself  to  it  ofiicially,  in- 
timated to  its  members  that  no  other  power  could  be  more 
inclined  to  act  upon  the  principles  which  its  fundamental 
articles  seemed  necessarily  to  involve.  It  had  its  series  of 
congresses ;  for,  curiously  enough,  its  meetings  had  the 
same  name  given  them  as  those  of  our  present  peace 
associations  ;  and  at  the  first  of  these,  held  at  Aix-la- 
Chapelle  in  1818,  there  was  prepared,  and  subsequently 
published  by  its  members,  a  declaration  to  the  effect  that 


THE   PEACE   MEETINGS.  207 

peace  was  its  paramount  object.  What,  asks  the  reader, 
was  the  name  borne  by  this  eminently  good  and  truly 
Christian  peace  society  ?  Its  name  was  the  Holy  Alliance, 
—  a  name  that  now  stinks  in  the  nosti'il ;  and  it  was  in 
effect  a  foul  and  detestable  conspiracy  against  the  progress 
of  nations  and  the  best  interests  of  the  human  species. 
But  such,  of  necessity,  must  be  the  nature  and  character 
of  every  peace  association  of  which  the  members  are  gov- 
ernments, if  a  majority  of  these  be  despotic.  And  if  the 
members  of  a  peace  association  be  not  governments,  they 
can  of  course  possess  no  powers  of  arbitration.  In  vain 
may  Joseph  Sturge  and  his  friends  propose  themselves  as 
arbiters  in  any  such  quaiTcI  as  that  which  recently  took 
place  between  Austria  and  the  Hungarians,  or  between 
France  and  Rome.  The  reply  made  to  the  pacific  Quaker, 
were  there  to  be  reply  at  all,  would  be  exactly  that  made 
by  Captain  Swoi-d  to  Captain  Pen,  — 

"  Let  Captain  Pen 
Bring  at  his  Lack  a  million  men, 
And  I'll  talk  to  his  wisdom,  and  not  till  then .'' 

And,  on  the  other  hand,  if  governments,  we  repeat,  take 
up  the  work  of  arbitration  in  such  cases, — governments 
such  as  those  of  Russia,  Sweden,  Prussia,  Austria,  France, 
Sardinia,  Naples,  Spain,  and  Portugal,  —  and  such  are  the 
existing  elements  for  an  Arbitration  Court,  —  it  is  easy  to 
divine  how  the  peace  of  the  world  would  be  preserved :  it 
would  be  preserved  by  the  putting  down  of  what  would 
be  termed  rebellion  in  Hungary,  and  revolution  in  Rome. 
Often  did  Chalmers  quote  the  emphatic  words,  "fii'stjowre, 
then  peaceable.''''  And  very  emphatic  words  they  are,  and 
singularly  pregnant  with  meaning.  They  reveal  why  it  is 
that  peace  societies,  in  the  present  state  of  the  world,  can 
produce  no  direct  results.  The  nations  and  the  govern- 
ments must  realize  the  purity  ere  they  can  rationally  ex- 
pect the  peace.  Peace  under  certain  limitations  is  no 
doubt  a  duty.     "  If  it  be  possible,  as  much  as  lieth  in  you," 


298  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 

says  th  3  apostle,  "  live  peaceably  with  all  men."  But  the 
qualifications  of  the  text  are  very  important  ones,  —  "  if  it 
he  possible^''  and  "  as  much  as  lietJi  in  you^'' —  so  important 
that  they  make  a  state  of  peace  to  be  not  so  much  a  duty 
to  be  accomplished  as  a  gift  to  be  received.  "  When  a 
man's  ways  please  the  Lord,"  said  the  wise  king,  "  He  mak- 
eth  even  his  enemies  to  be  at  peace  with  him."  Nor  can 
peace  associations  alter  this  state  of  matters.  They  cannot 
by  any  scheme  of  arbitration  convert  the  gift  simply  into  a 
duty,  seeing  that  if  they  take  the  existing  governments  as 
the  elements  of  their  arbitration  courts,  their  plan  involves 
of  necessity  merely  the  creation  of  a  new  Holy  Alliance ; 
and  if,  on  the  contrary,  they  propose  first  remodelling  and 
reforming  the  nations,  so  as  to  qualify  their  governments 
for  arbitrating  j  ustly,  they  change  their  nature,  and  become 
revolution  societies,  —  of  course,  another  name  for  war  soci- 
eties. 

But,  though  we  can  thus  promise  ourselves  no  direct 
results  from  the  peace  societies  of  the  times,  their  indirect 
results  may  be  very  important.  That  dislike  of  war  which 
good  men  have  entertained  in  all  ages,  is,  we  are  happy  to 
believe,  a  fast-spreading  dislike.  It  was  formerly  enter- 
tained by  units  and  tens ;  it  is  now  cherished  by  thousands 
and  tens  of  thousands.  And  of  course  the  more  the  feel- 
ing grows  in  any  country,  which,  like  France,  Britain,  and 
America,  possesses  a  representative  government,  the  less 
chance  will  there  be  of  these  nations  entering  rashly  into 
war.  France  and  the  United  States  have  always  had  their 
senseless  war  parties.  It  is  of  importance,  therefore,  that 
they  should  possess  also  their  balancing  peace  parties,  even 
should  these  be  well-nigh  as  senseless  as  the  others.  Again, 
in  our  own  country  war  is  always  the  interest  of  a  class 
largely  represented  in  both  Houses  of  Parliament.  It  is  of 
great  importance  that  they  also  should  be  kept  in  check, 
and  their  influence  neutralized,  by  a  party  as  hostile  to  war 
Dn  principle  as  they  ai-e  favorable  to  it  from  interest.  We 
repose  very  considerable  confidence  in  the  common  sense 


THE   PEACE   MEETINQS.  299 

of  the  British  people,  and  so  have  no  fear  that  an  irrational 
peace  party  should  so  increase  in  the  country  as  to  put  in 
peril  the  national  independence  ;  and,  not  fearing  this,  we 
must  hail  as  good  and  advantageous  any  revolution  in 
that  opinion  in  which  all  power  is  founded,  which  bids  fair 
to  render  more  rare  than  formerly  those  profitless  exhibi- 
tions of  national  warfare  which  the  poet  of  the  "  Seasons  " 
so  graphically  describes  :  — 

"  What  most  showed  the  vanity  of  life 
Was  to  behold  the  nations  all  on  fire. 
In  cruel  broils  engaged  and  deadly  strife : 
Most  Christian  kings,  inflamed  by  black  desire. 
With  honorable  ruffians  in  their  hire, 
Cause  war  to  wage,  and  blood  around  to  poor. 
Of  this  sad  work  when  each  begins  to  tire 
They  sit  them  down  just  where  they  were  before. 
Till  for  new  scenes  of  woe  peace  shall  their  force  reatora^ 


800  POLITICAL   AND    SOCIAL. 


XVII. 

LITERATURE  OF  THE  PEOPLE. 

«  The  Crock  of  Gold,"  «  Toil  and  Trial,"  and  a  «  Story 
of  the  West  End,"  are  all  little  works  which  have  been 
sent  us  for  review  during  the  last  few  months.  "  The 
Crock  of  Gold "  is  a  story  about  a  poor  English  laborer, 
who  lived  in  a  damp,  unwholesome,  exceedingly  pictur- 
esque hovel,  on  eight  shillings  per  week  ;  "  Toil  and  Trial " 
is  a  story  about  a  poor  shopman  and  his  wife,  who  had  to 
toil  together  in  much  unhappiness  on  the  long-hour,  late- 
shuttmg-up  system ;  and  a  "  Story  of  the  West  End  "  is  a 
story  about  two  poor  needle-girls,  of  whom  one  sank  into 
the  grave  under  her  protracted  labor,  and  the  other  nar- 
rowly escaped  degradation  and  ruin.  They  are  all  inter- 
esting, well-written  little  works  ;  but  what  we  would  at 
present  remark  in  incidental  connection  with  them  is  that 
very  decided  change  of  direction  which  our  higher  literature 
has  taken  during  the  last  twenty  years,  and  more  especially 
during  the  last  ten.  The  great-grandfathers  and  great- 
grandmothers  of  the  present  reading  public  could  sympa- 
thize in  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  only  kings  and  queens  ; 
and  the  critics  of  the  day  gave  reasons  why  it  should  be  so. 
Humble  life  was  introduced  upon  the  stage,  or  into  works 
of  fiction,  only  to  be  laughed  at ;  or  so  bedizzened  with 
the  unnatural  frippery  of  Pastoral,  that  the  picture  repre- 
sented, not  the  realities  of  actual  life,  but  merely  one  of 
the  idlest  conventualities  of  literature.  But  we  have  lived 
to  see  a  great  revolution  in  these  matters  reach  almost  its 
culminating  point.  It  is  kings  and  queens,  albeit  subjected 
to  greater  and  more  sudden  revolutions  than  at  any  former 
period  of  the  world's  history,  that  have  now  no  place  in  the 


LITERATURE   OF   THE   PEOPLE.  301 

literature  of  fiction.  We  have  our  humbler  people  exhibited 
instead  ;  and  the  reading  public  are  invited  to  sympathize 
in  the  sorrows  and  trials  of  aged  laborers  of  an  independent 
spirit,  settling  down,  not  withoiit  many  an  unavailing  strug- 
gle, into  dreaded  pauperism  ;  overwrought  artisans  aveng- 
ing their  sufferings  upon  their  wealthy  masters  ;  and  poor, 
friendless  needle-women  bearing  long  up  against  the  evils 
of  incessant  toil  and  extreme  privation,  but  at  length 
sinking  into  degradation  or  the  grave.  We  are  made  ac- 
quainted in  tales  and  novels  with  the  machinery  and  prin- 
ciples of  strike-associations  and  trades'  unions,  and  intro- 
duced to  the  firesides  of  carriers,  publicans,  and  porters. 

There  is  a  fashion  in  all  such  matters,  that  lasts  but  for 
a  time ;  and  what  we  chiefly  fear  is,  that  the  present  dispo- 
sition on  the  part  of  the  reading  public  to  look  more  closely 
than  formerly  into  the  state  of  the  laboring  classes,  and  to 
take  an  interest  in  their  humble  stories,  may  be  suffered  to 
pass  away  unimproved.  Wherever  there  exists  a  large 
demand  for  any  speciesof  manufacture,  spurious  imitations 
are  sure  to  abound ;  and  when  the  supply  becomes  at  once 
greatly  deteriorated  and  greatly  too  ample,  there  com- 
mences a  period  of  reaction  and  depression.  An  over- 
charged satiety  takes  the  place  of  the  previously  existing 
interest.  It  is  of  importance,  therefore,  —  for  there  are 
already  many  spurious  articles  in  the  field,  —  that  the  still 
unblunted  appetite  should  be  ministei-ed  to,  not  by  the 
spurious,  but  by  the  real,  and  that  only  the  true  condition 
and  character  of  those  classes  which  must  always  comprise 
the  great  bulk  of  mankind  should  be  exhibited  to  the 
classes  on  a  higher  level  than  themselves,  on  whose  exer- 
tions in  their  behalf  so  very  much  must  depend.  Nor 
would  the  advantage  be  all  on  one  side  ;  both  the  high 
and  the  low  would  be  greatly  the  better  for  knowing  each 
other.  It  would  tend  to  contract  and  narrow  the  perilous 
gulf  which  yawns,  in  this  and  in  all  the  other  countries  of 
Europe,  between  the  poor  and  the  wealthy,  were  it  mutually 
felt,  not  merely  coldly  acknowledged,  that  God  has  made 
26 


802  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

them  of  one  blood,  and  given  to  them  the  same  sympathieg 
and  faculties,  and  that  the  things  in  which  they  difler  are 
mere  superficial  circumstances,  the  effect  of  accident  of 
position.  "  I  have  long  had  a  notion,"  said  the  late  Wil- 
liam Thom,  the  Inverury  poet,  "  that  many  of  the  heart- 
burnings that  run  through  the  social  whole  spring  not  so 
much  from  the  distinctiveness  of  classes,  as  from  their  mu- 
tual ignorance  of  each  other.  The  miserably  rich  look  on 
the  miserably  poor  with  distrust  and  dread,  scarcely  giving 
them  credit  for  sensibility  sufficient  to  feel  their  own  sor- 
row. That  is  ignorance  with  its  gilded  side.  The  poor, 
in  turn,  foster  a  hatred  of  the  wealthy  as  a  sole  inheritance, 
look  on  grandeur  as  their  natural  enemy,  and  bend  to  the 
rich  man's  rule  in  gall  and  bleeding  scorn.  Puppies  on 
the  one  side  and  demagogues  on  the  other  are  the  portions 
that  come  oflenest  in  contact.  These  are  the  luckless 
things  that  skirt  the  great  divisions,  exchanging  all  that  is 
offensive  therein.  'Man,  know  thyself,' should  be  written 
on  the -«ight  hand;  and  on  the  left,  'Men,  know  each 
other.'"  These  are  quaintly  expressed  sentences,  but  they 
are  pregnant  with  meaning. 

It  is  no  uninteresting  matter  to  trace,  in  the  various 
styles  of  English  literature,  the  part  assigned  to  the  people. 
They  cut  but  a  poor  figure  in  Shakspeare.  The  wonderful 
wool-comber  of  Stratford-on-Avon  rose  from  among  them  ; 
but  it  would  scarce  have  served  the  interests  of  the  Globe 
Theatre  in  those  days  to  have  ennobled,  by  any  of  the 
higher  qualities  of  head  or  heart,  the  humble  peers  and 
associates  of  wool-combers  ;  and  so,  wherever  the  people, 
as  such,  are  introduced  in  his  dramas,  whether  they  be 
citizens  of  Rome,  as  in  "  Coriolanus,"  or  English  country 
folk,  as  in  "  Henry  VI.,"  we  find  them  represented  as  fickle, 
unthinking,  and  ludicrously  absurd.  In  the  works  of  his 
contemporary  Spencer  we  do  not  find  the  people  at  all ; 
but  discover,  instead,  what  for  nearly  two  hundred  years 
after  his  time  occupied  their  place  in  our  literature :  we 
are   introduced   to   shepherds   in   abundance,   Hobbinols, 


LITERATURE   OF  THE  PEOPLE.  303 

Diggon  Davies,  and  Colin  Clouts,  and  find  mucb^eference 
made  to  "  huts  where  poor  men  lie ; "  but  it  is  the  poor 
men  of  the  classical  Pastoral,  who  wei'e  in  reality  neither 
poor  nor  men,  bat  mere  fictions  of  the  poets,  —  the  inhab- 
itants of  a  Utopia  filled  with  crooks,  and  pipes,  and  gar- 
lands of  flowers. 

There  have  been  many  criticisms  on  the  Pastoral,  some 
of  these  by  the  first  names  in  our  literature,  —  Pope,  Ad- 
dison, and  Johnson  ;  but  the  true  secret  of  the  origin  of 
this,  the  least  natural  and  interesting  of  all  the  depart- 
ments of  poetry,  we  have  not  yet  seen  indicated.  Like  the 
silver  mask  of  the  veiled  prophet  that  gleamed  far  amid 
the  darkness  of  the  night,  and  yet  covered  a  countenance 
too  horrible  to  be  bared  to  the  eye,  it  formed  in  the  ancient 
literature  the  mask  that  at  once  concealed  and  represented 
the  face  of  the  people,  —  a  fiice  scarred  and  deformed  by 
a  cruel  system  of  domestic  slavery,  and  so  unfit  to  be 
uncovered.  In  every  truly  national  literature  the  people 
must  be  exhibited ;  and  if  they  cannot  be  exhibited  as 
they  are,  they  must  be  exhibited  as  they  are  not.  Hence 
the  pastoral  poetry  of  Rome  and  Greece  :  it  was  the  sil\;er 
mask  of  a  veiled  people  ;  and  that  of  England  and  the 
other  nations  of  Europe  was  simply  a  tame  imitation  of  it. 
About  the  middle  of  the  last  century  the  Pastoral  proper 
died  out  of  insanity,  and  the  people  began  to  be  exhibited, 
first  in  Scotland  by  Allan  Ramsay,  who,  though  he  retained 
in  his  exquisite  drama  the  old  pastoral  outlines,  looked  in- 
telligently around  him,  and,  drawing  his  materials  fresh 
from  among  the  humble  class,  out  of  which  he  had  arisen, 
gave  life,  and  truth,  and  nature  to  the  dead  blank  form. 
It  was  perhaps  in  Scotland  that  the  people  could  be  first 
represented  as  they  really  were.  The  vitalities  of  the  na- 
tional religion  had  already  placed  them  on  a  high  moral 
platform,  and  the  national  scheme  of  education  —  a  result 
of  the  national  religion  —  had  developed  their  faculties  as 
thinking  men.  As  the  Pastoral  gradually  divsappeared  in 
England,  the  people  began  to  be  exhibited,  at  first  very 


304  POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL. 

inadequaUlly  and  partially,  but  with  certain  lineaments  of 
truth.  Fielding  and  Richardson  were  contemporary.  The 
first,  a  debauchee  and  a  Bow  Street  magistrate,  had  an  eye 
for  but  what  was  bad  and  ridiculous  in  the  popular  char- 
acter. If  we  except  Joseph  Andrews,  —  a  sort  of  male 
Pamela,  drawn  rather  to  caricature  Richardson  than  from 
any  sympathy  with  good  morals  and  right  feeling  in  a 
humble  hero,  —  there  is  not  one  of  the  people  whom  in 
his  character  as  an  artist  he  exhibits  in  his  works,  whom 
in  his  character  as  a  magistrate  he  would  not  punish  as  a 
scoundrel.  The  staple  of  his  humbler  chai-acters  is  vulgar 
rascality.  Richardson  did  better  as  a  man,  but  not  greatly 
better  as  an  artist.  His  Pamela  is  rather  a  picture  drawn 
in  his  back-parlor  from  his  own  imagination  than  an  ex- 
hibition of  a  real  character,  representative  of  any  section 
of  the  people.  There  is  more  truth  in  the  humbler  charac- 
ters of  Smollett ;  and,  though  enveloped  in  the  ridiculous, 
not  a  few  of  them  possess  what  the  humbler  characters  of 
Fielding  want,  —  right  feeling  and  a  moral  sense.  But 
even  of  his  own  countrymen  of  the  humbler  order  Smol- 
lett could  do  little  more  than  portray  the  externals :  he 
was  ignorant  of  the  inner  life  of  Scotland,  and  of  those 
high  principles  which  can  impart  dignity  to  even  the  poor- 
est. A  Bunyan  or  a  Robert  Burns  would  have  constituted 
a  phenomenon  beyond  his  conception. 

It  was  the  part  of  this  last-named  genius  to  assert  for 
tlie  people  their  true  place  in  British  literature,  —  directly, 
no  doubt,  by  many  of  his  writings,  but  not  less  efficiently 
by  his  life,  and  by  the  light  which  his  biography  has  thrown 
on  his  humble  compeers.  It  is  interesting  to  observe  in 
the  lives  of  our  eminent  men  how  each  brings  out  into 
full  view  a  group  of  individuals  of  whom  we  would  other- 
wise never  have  heard.  Each,  like  the  sun  of  a  system, 
possessed  in  himself  the  effulgence  which  renders  him  vis- 
ible across  the  lapse  of  ages ;  but  that  effulgence  confers 
visibility  on  not  only  himself,  but  on  many  an  attendant 
planet  besides,  that,  save  for  the  reflected  light,  would  misa 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   PEOPLE.  305 

being  seen  altogether.  We  see  a  Cowper  suiTounded  by 
the  Ileskeths  and  Austins,  the  TJnwins  and  the  Johnstones  ; 
and  a  Henry  Kh-ke  White,  by  brothers  Neville  and  James, 
the  Haddocks,  the  Charlesworths,  and  the  Svvanns.  The 
light  which  Burns  cast  revealed  the  Scottish  peasantry  to 
the  literati  of  Britain  as  men  of  no  inferior  grade  or  stunted 
proportions ;  and  the  revelation  has  told  upon  our  litera- 
ture. Had  there  been  no  Burns,  it  is  not  very  probable 
that  the  philosophic  hero  of  the  "  Excursion  "  would  have 
been  represented  as  a  peddler  ;  nay,  we  doubt  if  a  man  so 
tinged  with  Toryism  as  Sir  Walter  Scott  would  have  dared 
to  give,  under  the  previous  state  of  things,  a  heroine  so 
humble  as  Jeanie  Deans  to  one  of  his  greater  productions, 
or  a  hero  of  such  lowly  extraction  as  Halbert  Glendinning 
to  another.  The  surprise  elicited  in  the  mind  of  every 
intelligent  man  by  the  introduction  to  the  Scottish  people 
in  their  true  character,  which  the  life  and  writings  of  Burns 
secured,  we  find  well  expressed  by  Lord  Jeffrey,  in  a  crit- 
ique on  "  Cromek's  Reliques,"  written  more  than  forty 
years  ago.  "  It  is  impossible  to  read  the  productions  of 
Burns,"  says  this  accomplished  writer,  "  without  forming  a 
higher  idea  of  the  intelligence,  taste,  and  accomplishments 
of  the  peasantry  than  most  of  those  in  the  higher  ranks 
are  disposed  to  entertain.  Without  meaning  to  deny  that 
he  himself  was  endowed  with  rare  and  extraordinary  gifts 
of  genius  and  fancy,  it  is  evident,  from  the  whole  details 
of  his  history,  as  well  as  from  the  letters  of  his  brother, 
and  the  testimony  of  Mr.  Murdoch  and  others  to  the  char- 
acter of  his  father,  that  the  whole  family,  and  many  of 
their  associates  who  have  never  emerged  from  the  native 
obscurity  of  their  condition,  possessed  talents,  and  taste, 
and  intelligence  which  are  little  suspected  to  lurk  in  these 
humble  retreats.  His  epistles  to  brother  poets  in  the  rank 
of  farmers  and  shop-keepers  in  the  adjoining  villages,  the 
existence  of  a  book-society  and  debating-club  among  per- 
sons of  that  description,  and  many  other  incidental  traits 
in  his  sketches  of  his  youthful  companions,  all  contribute 
26* 


806  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

to  show  that  not  only  good  sense  and  enlightened  raoraliky^ 
but  literature  and  talents  for  speculation,  are  tar  more  gen- 
erally diffused  in  society  than  is  generally  iuiagined,  and 
that  the  delights  and  the  benefits  of  these  generous  and 
humanizing  pursuits  are  by  no  means  confined  to  those 
whom  leisure  and  affluence  have  courted  to  their  enjoy- 
ment. That  much  of  this  is  peculiar  to  Scotland,  and  may 
be  properly  referred  to  our  excellent  institutions  for  paro- 
chial education,  and  to  the  natural  sobriety  and  prudence 
of  our  nation,  may  certainly  be  allowed;  but  we  have  no 
doubt  that  there  is  a  good  deal  of  the  same  principle  in 
England,  and  that  the  actual  intelligence  of  the  lower 
orders  will  be  found  there  also  very  far  to  exceed  the  or- 
dinary estimates  of  their  superiors." 

This  striking  passage  suggests  to  us  what  we  deem  the 
main  defect  of  much  of  the  modern  literature  in  which  the 
working  classes  are  represented.  There  is  no  lack  of  a 
hearty  sympathy  on  the  part  of  the  writers  with  the  feel- 
ings of  our  humbler  people  ;  but  we  are  sensible  of  a  fee- 
bleness of  conception  when  they  profess  to  grapple  with 
their  intellect.  They  can  appreciate  the  hearts,  but  fail 
to  estimate  at  the  nght  value  the  heads,  of  those  with 
whom  they  have  to  do.  And  hence  pictures  true  but  in 
part. 

The  two  most  remarkable  men  who  rose  from  among 
the  people  during  the  last  century  were  Robert  Burns  and 
Benjamin  Franklin ;  and  both  have  left  us  autobiographi- 
cal sketches,  in  which  they  refer  to  the  associates  of  their 
early  days.  In  what  terras  do  they  speak  of  their  capacity  ? 
Certainly  in  terms  very  different  from  what  the  modern 
novelist  or  tale-writer  would  employ.  Many  of  the  humble 
men  with  whom  the  great  poet  and  great  philosopher  came 
in  contact  were  men  from  whom  they  were  content  to 
learn.  A  young  lady  of  literary  taste  and  acquirements 
would  draw  a  female  in  the  sphere  of  the  authoress  of  the 
"Pearl  of  Days,"  as  perhaps  a  person  of  just  views  and 
correct  feeling ;  but  in  describing  her  intellect,  she  would 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   PEOPLE.  307 

of  course  feel  necessitated  to  let  herself  down.  But  we 
discover,  when  the  authoress  of  the  "Pearl  of  Days"  takes 
up  the  pen  in  her  own  behalfj  and  tells  her  own  story,  that 
the  young  literary  lady  might  not  let  herself  down.  She 
might  exercise  all  her  own  intellect  in  portraying  that  of 
her  heroine,  and  not  find  the  stock  over-great.  In  like 
manner,  were  a  modern  tale-writer  to  describe  a  good 
weaver,-  forced  by  lack  of  employment  to  quit  his  comfort- 
less home,  and  cast  himself  with  his  wife  and  children  upon 
the  cold  charity  of  the  world,  he  might  bestow  upon  him 
keen  sensibilities,  a  depressing  sense  of  degradation,  and  a 
feeling  of  shame ;  but  his  thoughts  on  the  occasion  would 
scarce  fail  to  partake  of  the  poverty  of  his  circumstances. 
When,  however,  the  weaver  Tom  tells  exactly  such  a  story 
of  himself,  not  as  a  piece  of  fiction,  but  as  a  sad  truth 
burnt  into  his  memory,  we  find  the  keen  sensibility  and 
the  sense  of  shame  united  to  thinking  of  great  power, 
heightened  in  effect  by  no  stinted  measure  of  the  poetic 
faculty. 

Now,  from  our  knowledge  of  such  cases,  and  from 
a  felt  want,  in  our  modern  fictitious  narratives,  of  what 
we  shall  term  the  inner  life  of  the  working  classes,  what 
we  would  fain  recommend  is,  that  the  working  classes 
should  themselves  tell  their  own  stories.  A  series  of  auto- 
biographies of  working-men,  produced,  like  the  Sabbath 
Essays,  on  the  competition  principle,  and  rendered,  by 
judicious  selection,  representative  of  the  various  manual 
trades  of  the  country  and  its  several  districts,  would  form 
one  of  perhaps  the  most  valuable,  and  certainly  not  least 
interesting,  "Miscellanies,"  which  the  enterprise  of  the 
"  Trade  "  has  yet  given  to  the  country.  It  would  consti- 
tute, too,  a  contribution  to  the  domestic  history  of  the 
period,  the  importance  of  which  could  not  be  very  easily 
over-estimated.  It  were  well,  surely,  that  the  appetite 
which  exists  for  information  regarding  the  true  state  and 
feelings  of  the  working  classes  should  be  satisfied  with 
other  than  mere  pictures  of  the  imagination.     A  series  of 


308  POLITICAL   AND   SOCIAL. 

cheap  volumes,  such  as  we  desiderate,  would  furnish  many 
an  interesting  glimpse  into  the  lives  of  the  laboring  poor, 
and  deepen  the  interest  in  their  welfare  already  so  gen- 
erally felt.  And  we  are  sure  the  scheme,  if  attempted  by 
some  judicious  bookseller,  would  scarce  fail  to  remunerate. 


LITERARY  AND  SCIENTIFIC. 


I. 

IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  GREAT  EXHIBITION, 


FIRST   ARTICLE. 

The  Exhibition  closed  upon  Saturday  last ;  and  one  of 
the  most  marvellous  and  instructive  sights  which  the  world 
ever  saw  now  survives  only  as  a  gi'eat  recollection,  —  as  a 
lesson  unique  in  the  history  of  the  species,  which  has  been 
fairly  given,  but  which,  upon  the  same  scale  at  least,  we 
need  scarce  hope  to  see  repeated.  I  spent  the  greater  part 
of  last  week  amid  its  long  withdrawing  aisles  and  galleries, 
and,  without  specially  concentrating  myself  on  any  one  set 
of  objects,  artistic  or  mechanical,  set  my  thoughts  loose 
among  the  whole,  to  see  whether  they  could  not  glean  up 
for  future  use  a  few  general  impressions,  better  suited  to 
remain  with  me  than  any  mere  recollections  of  the  partic- 
ular and  the  minute.  The  memory  lays  fast  hold  of  the 
sum  total  in  an  important  calculation,  and  retains  it;  but 
of  all  the  intermediate  sums  employed  in  the  work  of  reduc- 
tion or  summation  it  takes  no  hold  whatever  ;  and  so,  in 
most  minds,  on  a  somewhat  similar  principle, general  results 
are  remembered,  while  the  multitudinous  items  from  which 
they  are  derived  fade  into  dimness  and  ai-e  forgotten. 

Like  every  other  visitor,  I  was  first  impressed  by  the 
great  building  which  spanned  over  the  whole,  having  ample 


310  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

room  in  its  vast  areas  for  at  once  the  productions  of  a  world 
and  the  population  of  a  great  city.  I  was  one  of  a  hundred 
and  eight  thousand  persons  who  at  once  stood  under  its 
roof;  nor,  save  at  a  few.  points,  was  the  pressure  incon- 
veniently great.  If  equally  spread  over  the  building,  all 
the  present  population  of  Edinburgh  could,  without  the 
displacement  of  a  single  article,  have  found  ample  standing 
room  within  the  walls.  And  yet  this  greatest  of  buildings 
did  not  impress  me  as  great.  In  one  point  at  least,  where 
the  airy  transept  raises  its  transparent  ai'ch  seventy  feet 
over  the  floor,  and  the  sunlight  from  above  sported  freely 
amid  the  foliage  of  the  imprisoned  trees  and  on  the  play 
of  crystal  fountains,  it  struck  me  as  eminently  beantiftil : 
but  the  idea  which  it  conveyed  everywhere  else  was 
simply  one  of  largeness,  not  of  greatness.  There  are  but 
two  great  ideas  in  the  architecture  of  the  world,  —  the 
Grecian  idea  and  the  Gothic  idea ;  and  though  both  de- 
mand for  their  full  development  a  certain  degree  of  magni- 
tude, without  which  they  sink  into  mere  models,  very 
ample  magnitude  is  not  demanded.  York  Minster  and 
St.  Paul's  united  would  scarce  cover  one  fourth  the  space 
occupied  by  the  Crystal  Palace,  and  yet  they  are  both 
great  buildings,  and  it  is  not.  Hercules,  the  son  of  the 
most  potent  of  the  gods,  was  great ;  whereas  the  earthborn 
giants  that  he  conque'red  and  slew  were  simply  bulky. 
And  in  woi'ks  of  art  so  much  depends,  in  like  manner,  on 
lineage,  that  things  of  plebeian  origin,  however  large  they 
may  eventually  become,  rarely  if  ever  attain  to  greatness. 
Two  or  three  centuries  ago,  some  lover  of  flowers  and 
shrubs  bethought  him  of  shielding  his  more  delicate  plants 
from  the  severity  of  the  climate  by  a  small  glass-frame, 
consisting  of  a  few  panes.  In  course  of  time,  the  idea  em- 
bodied in  the  frame  expanded  into  a  moderate-sized  hot- 
house, then  into  a  green-house  of  considerably  larger  size, 
then  into  a  tall  palm-house  ;  and,  last  of  all,  an  ingenious 
gardener,  bred  among  groves  of  exotics  protected  by  huge 
erections  of  glass  and  iron,  and  familiar  with  the  necessity 


IMPRESSIONS   OP   THE   GREAT   EXHIBITION.  311 

of  adding  to  the  size  of  a  case  as  the  objects  which  it  had 
to  contain  multiplied  or  were  enlarged,  bethought  him  of 
expanding  the  idea  yet  further  into  the  Crystal  Palace  of 
the  Exhibition.  And  such  seems  to  be  the  history  and 
lineage  of  perhaps  the  largest  of  all  buildings:  it  is  simply 
an  expansion  of  the  first  glass-frame  that  covered  the  first 
few  delicate  flowers  transplanted  from  a  warmer  to  a  colder 
climate,  and,  notwithstanding  its  imposing  proportions,  is 
as  much  a  mere  case  as  it  was.  And  were  its  size  to  be 
doubled,  —  if,  instead  of  containing  two  hundred  miles  of 
sash-bars  and  nine  hundred  thousand  superficial  feet  of 
glass,  it  were  stretched  out  so  as  to  contain  four  hundred 
miles  of  bars  and  eighteen  hundred  thousand  feet  of  glass,  — 
it  would  be  of  course  a  larger  building  than  it  is,  but  not  a 
greater.  Nay,  I  should  perhaps  rather  remark  that  it  would 
be  impossible  by  addition  to  render  it  not  only  rnore^  but 
even  less  great  than  it  is,  —  in  itself  a  mark  of  inferiority. 
To  a  truly  great  building  it  would  be  impossible  to  add ; 
for  unity,  as  a  whole,  forms  the  very  soul  of  all  great  edifices. 
He  would  be  a  bold  man  who  would  attempt  making  a 
single  addition  to  St.  Paul's,  —  one  tower  more  would  ruin 
it;  whereas  the  length  or  breadth  of  a  railway  terminus  may 
be  increased  ad  infinitum^  without  in  the  least  affecting  its 
unity  or  proportions ;  for  the  railway  terminus  is  also  a 
mere  case,  and  its  unity  and  proportions  bear  reference  to 
but  the  rule  of  convenience,  which  directs  that  it  should 
be  made  quite  large  enough  to  hold  what  it  had  been 
erected  to  shelter.  It  is  ill,  I  may  add,  with  an  architec- 
ture, of  what  at  least  ought  to  be  the  higher  kind,  when  it 
is  found  to  come  under  this  law  of  the  lower.  I  was  soiTy 
to  observe  that  the  singularly  ornate  pile  which  contains 
the  new  Houses  of  Parliament,  now  nearly  finished,  could, 
like  the  glass  palace  or  a  railway  terminus,  and  very  unlike 
either  St.  Paul's  or  York  Minster,  be  made  either  twice  as 
long  as  it  is  now,  or  shorter  by  one  half,  without  rendering 
it  either  a  better  building  or  a  worse. 

Once  fairly  entered  within  the  edifice,  the  objects  first 


812  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

singled  out  by  the  eye  were  a  few  noble  statues,  such  as  the 
Greek  Slave  and  the  Amazon  and  Tiger ;  nor  was  it  until 
these  works  of  genius  were  scanned  that  the  humbler  works 
of  mere  talent  and  art  succeeded  in  forcing  themselves  on 
the  attention.  And  yet  these  last  served  to  show  much 
more  definitely  the  actual  stage  of  progress  at  which  the 
nations  that  produced  them  had  arrived  than  the  higher 
order  of  works.  When  genius  is  the  artist,  the  goal  is 
soon  reached ;  whereas  talent  labors  slowly.  Genius,  too, 
can  work  very  much  alone,  and  bid,  as  Johnson  expresses 
it,  "  help  and  hinderance  alike  vanish  before  it ; "  whereas 
talent  requires  the  assistance  of  a  thousand  coadjutors. 
And  so  we  find  that  genius,  laboring  in  ancient  Greece 
greatly  more  than  two  thousand  years  ago,  produced  its 
statues  and  its  architecture,  its  orations,  its  history,  and 
its  poetry,  to  be  models  and  patterns  to  the  world  through- 
out all  after  ages.  But  the  world  at  the  time  was  too 
much  in  its  infancy  to  excel  in  works  of  talent ;  and  so 
Greece,  even  when  erecting  the  Parthenon,  or  sculpturing 
the  figures  on  its  frieze,  could  not  have  built  and  furnished 
a  single  ship  of  the  line,  or  raised  such  a  palace  of  glass 
and  iron  as  that  of  Mr.  Paxton.  I  found,  however,  that  in 
works  of  genius,  as  certainly  as  of  talent,  what  may  be 
properly  termed  the  civilized  nations  of  the  world  march 
abreast  of  each  other  in  nearly  the  same  line,  —  not  serially 
in  file ;  and  it  is  one  of  the  advantages  of  the  Exhibition 
that  it  should  teach  this  lesson.  The  United  States  of 
America,  France,  Austria,  Northern  Germany,  Denmark, 
Italy  and  Sardinia,  England  and  Scotland,  are  all  laboring 
in  nearly  the  same  arts,  artistic  and  mechanical,  and  pro- 
ducing nearly  the  same  results.  Their  inhabitants  are 
intellectually  of  like  statm*e,  and  similarly  trained,  —  a  fact 
which  national  pride,  schooled  in  the  Exhibition,  will  now 
scarce  venture  to  deny,  and  which,  we  are  disposed  to 
think,  the  English  people  will  be  much  the  better  for  know- 
ing ;  seeing  that  to  undervalue  a  competitor  or  opponent 
is  one  of  the  most  certain  ways  possible  to  secure  defeat, 


IMPRESSIONS   OP   THE   GREAT  EXHIBITION.  313 

and  to  form  a  correct  estimate  of  him  one  of  the  most  effec- 
tual means  of  avoiding  it. 

It  was  interesting  enough  to  read,  in  the  extent  of  some 
manufactures  all  over  the  world,  as  shown  in  the  various 
departments  of  the  Exhibition,  a  chronicle  of  their  great 
antiquity.  Tried  by  this  test,  the  art  of  the  weaver  seemed 
to  be  the  most  ancient ;  it  was,  in  at  least  this  display  of 
human  industry,  the  most  widely  diffused.  With  the  ex- 
ception of  a  few  barbarous  islands,  where  a  kind  of  coarse 
paper,  or  animal  skins,  or  the  layers  of  vegetable  tissue, 
form  an  imperfect  substitute  for  cloth,  every  nation  pre- 
sented for  examination  its  textile  fabrics,  very  diverse  iu 
pattern  in  most  instances,  but  constructed  on  the  same 
mechanical  principles,  and  ornamented,  if  not  in  the  same 
style,  at  least  by  the  same  arts.  That  quality  of  thread, 
for  instance,  of  reflecting  light  according  to  the  disposi- 
tion of  its  fibres  and  to  the  angle  in  which  it  is  viewed, 
which  forms  the  foundation  of  the  style  of  ornament  em- 
ployed in  damask,  and  in  so  many  other  fabrics,  seems  to 
be  known  all  over  the  world,  —  in  China,  with  its  insulated 
and  far-distant  centre  of  civilization  on  the  one  hand,  as 
certainly  as  in  America  on  the  other ;  and  in  all  countries 
the  same  arts  have  been  employed  to  make  this  quality 
paint  without  color  the  surface  of  the  fabric.  It  is  now 
more  than  three  thousand  years  since  the  patriarch  Job 
compared  the  short  life  of  man  to  the  swift  and  brief  flight 
of  a  weaver's  shuttle.  Judging  from  what  appears  in  the 
Exhibition,  it  seems  not  improbable  that  weavers'  shuttles, 
and  this  simple  art  of  painting  by  light  without  the  aid  of 
chemistrj'^,  may  have  been  spread  all  over  the  world  at  the 
dis[)ersal  of  mankind  from  before  the  great  tower.  And  it 
seemed  quite  curious  enough  to  reflect,  that  in  this  world's 
other  great  building  the  nations  should  have  assembled  for 
the  first  time,  to  show  whether  and  to  what  extent  they  had 
been  improving  the  talent,  or  whether,  like  a  few  of  the 
barbarous  tribes,  they  had  not  sunk  into  utter  degradation 
and  buried  it  in  the  earth.  In  passing  along  tlirough  thi* 
27 


314  LTTERART   AND   SCIENTIFTQ 

textile  department,  —  one  of  the  most  largely  represented 
in  the  Exhibition,  —  it  was  interesting  to  mark  the  differ- 
ent ideas  that  had  been  superadded  from  certain  countries 
to  the  original  stock.  The  Jacqnard  idea  seemed  one  of 
the  most  important;  and  we  find  that,  with  the  potency 
of  a  true  idea,  it  has  spread  all  over  Europe  and  America. 
The  other  great  idea  in  this  depailment  is  of  such  recent 
origin,  that  we  found  it  well-nigh  still  restricted  to  its 
original  centre  of  production.  We  refer  to  the  invention 
of  our  fellow-citizen  Mr.  Richard  Whytock,  of  barring  the 
threads  across  in  the  state  of  yarn,  according  to  a  nice 
calculation,  with  varying  stripes  of  color,  and  of  then  form- 
ing them,  by  simply  committing  them  to  the  loom,  into 
rich  patterns,  that  grow  up  under  the  workman's  hand  he 
scarce  knows  how.  The  rich  magnificence  of  the  pieces 
exhibited  —  a  magnificence  that,  in  at  least  their  immedi- 
ate neighborhood,  threw  all  competition  into  the  shade — 
demonstrated  the  happiness  of  the  idea,  and  its  unique- 
ness in  the  Exhibition,  though  occurring  in  one  of  the 
oldest  of  arts,  its  great  originality. 

One  of  the  next  things  that  struck,  in  the  general  survey, 
was  the  tendency  of  all  the  merely  ornamental  ideas  pre- 
sented in  the  Exhibition  to  arrange  themselves  in  the  mind, 
in*espective  of  the  dates  of  their  production,  into  modern 
and  ancient.  The  semi-barbarous  and  the  civilized  nations 
are  contemporary  ;  the  workmen  who  produced  the  fabrics 
or  jewellery  of  China  and  of  Tunis  are  as  certainly  living 
men,  still  engaged  in  the  production  of  more,  as  the  work 
men  of  France  or  of  England ;  and  yet  their  works  bea» 
the  stamp  of  antiquity  ;  while  those  of  the  civilized  na- 
tions, save  where,  in  a  few  cases,  a  false  taste  has  led  to  a 
retrograde  movement,  bear  the  true  modern  air.  They  are 
things,  not  of  the  past,  but  of  the  present.  Not  a  few  of 
the  ideas  which  they  embody  are  absolutely  old  :  their 
sculpture  is  formed  on  the  old  model  of  Greece,  —  their 
architectural  ideas  are  either  Grecian  or  Gothic;  and  yet, 
though  associations  and  recollections  of  the  ancient  do 


IMPRESSIONS   or  THE   GREAT   EXHIBITION.  315 

mix  themselves  np  with  the  later  style,  we  feel  that,  unlike 
the  semi-barbarous  jtroclnctions  of  the  less  civilized  nations, 
they  are  not  old-fashioned,  but  new.  In  one  sense,  new 
and  true^  old  and  false,  are  evidently  convertible  terms. 
A  false  idea  in  art  always  becomes  old ;  while  a  true  idea 
lives  on,  and  bears  about  it  the  freshness  of  youth.  The 
false  idea  is  consigned  to  the  keeping  of  but  the  antiquary; 
whereas  civilized  man,  as  such,  becomes  the  depository  of 
the  true  one  ;  and  in  his  countless  reproductions  it  con- 
tinues to  bear  about  it  the  fresh  gloss  of  youth.  And  at 
length,  wdth  even  the  I'ecent,  if  false,  we  come  to  associate 
ideas  of  the  obsolete  and  the  old.  I  was  much  struck,  in 
the  medijBval  department  of  the  Exhibition,  —  a  depart- 
ment which  we  owe  to  Puseyism, — by  the  large  amount 
of  the  false  in  art  which  this  superstition  has  been  the 
means  of  calling  back  from  its  grave.  The  Gothic  ai'chi- 
tecture  is  true, —  one,  as  we  have  already  said,  of  the  two 
great  architectural  ideas  of  the  world.  But  the  Gothic 
sculpture  and  the  Gothic  painting  are  both  false  ;  and 
Puseyism  has,  with  the  nonsense  and  false  doctrine  of  the 
middle  ages,  been  restoring  both  the  false  painting  and  the 
false  sculpture.  The  grotesque  figures  gaudily  stained 
into  glass,  or  grimly  fretted  into  stone,  harmonized  well 
with  tall  candles  of  beeswax  and  cotton  wick,  to  light 
which  is  worship,  and  with  snug  little  cages  of  metal,  into 
which  priests  put  their  god  when  they  have  made  him 
out  of  a  little  dried  batter.  We  are  told  that  James  VII. 
strove  hard  to  convert  his  somewhat  unscrupulous  favorite, 
the  semi-infidel  Sheffield,  to  Popery.  "  Your  Majesty  must 
excuse  me,"  said  the  courtier :  "  I  have  at  length  come  to 
believe  that  God  made  man,  which  is  something;  but  I 
cannot  believe  that  man,  to  be  quits  with  his  Maker,  turns 
round  and  discharges  the  obligation  by  making  God."  In 
such  a  display  of  human  faculty  as  the  Great  Exhibition,  the 
«trangely-expressed  feeling  of  Sheffield  must  surely  have 
come  upon  many  a  visitor  of  the  mediaeval  apartment. 
What  man  is,  —  how  glorious  in  intellect,  bow  rich  in 


816  LITERAEY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

genius,  and  how  powerful  in  his  control  over  the  blind 
forces  of  nature,  —  was  manifested,  in  by  much  the  larger 
part  of  the  Exhibition,  in  a  manner  in  which  none  present 
had  ever  seen  it  manifested  before.  And  what  then  must 
be  the  character  and  standing  of  that  Great  Being  by 
whom  man  was  created  ?  Under  the  ample  roof,  however, 
there  were  here  and  there  grotesque  corners  filled  with 
the  false  and  the  old-fashioned  ;  and,  curiously  enough, 
there  were  posted  in  these  grotesque  corners,  as  specimens 
of  human  workmanship,  false,  old-fashioned  gods,  —  gods 
with  paunch  bellies,  and  gods  with  bloated,  negro-like  faces, 
and  gods  with  from  fourteen  to  twenty  hands  and  arms 
apiece ;  and  here,  in  yet  one  other  grotesque  corner,  amid 
a  false  sculpture,  we  found  copes,  and  albs,  and  painted 
candles  seven  feet  high,  and  little  cages  for  holding  what 
the  early  reformers  termed  the  "  bread-god,"  which  priests 
manufacture.  Here,  as  in  the  other  idolatrous  apartments, 
false,  old-fashioned  arts  were  associated  with  a  false,  old- 
fashioned  religion,  and  both  wore  alike  on  their  foreheads 
the  stamp  of  mortality  and  decay. 

Popery,  however,  had,  I  found,  one  grand  advantage 
over  Puseyism  in  its  use  of  art.  With  Puseyism  all  was 
restoration  from  a  barbarous  age,  that  possessed  only  one 
true  artistic  idea  among  many  false  ones  ;  whereas  Po- 
pery, on  the  other  hand,  had  availed  itself  of  art  in  all  its 
stages ;  and  so  all  its  artistic  ideas  were  the  best  and  truest 
of  their  respective  ages.  When  a  Michel  Angelo  appeared, 
it  forthwith  adopted  the  sculpture  of  a  Michel  Angelo  ; 
when  a  Raphael  appeared,  it  forthwith  adopted  the  paint- 
ing of  a  Raphael.  Instead  of  perpetuating  an  obsolete 
fashion  in  its  trinkets  and  jewels,  it  set  its  Benvenuto 
Cellini  to  model  and  set  them  anew;  nay,  in  Italy,  sur- 
rounded by  noble  fragments  of  the  old  classic  architecture, 
it  broke  off  its  associations  with  the  Gothic,  and  erected 
its  fairest  temples  in  the  old  Vitruvian  symmetry,  under 
the  eye  of  a  Palladio.  This  great  difference  between  the 
two  churches  was  most  instructively  shown  in  the  portion 


IMPRESSIONS   OF  THE  GREAT  EXHIBITION.  317 

of  the  Exhibition  devoted  to  the  display  of  stained  glass. 
The  English  contributions,  manufactured  for  the  Puseyite 
market,  abounded  in  ugly  saints  and  idiotical  virgins, 
flaming  in  tasteless  combinations  of  gaudy  color ;  whereas 
in  much  of  the  stained  glass  contributed  by  the  popish 
countries  of  the  Continent  the  style  is  exquisitely  RapTi- 
aelesque.  But  I  cannot  better  describe  the  difference  be- 
tween the  two  schools  than  in  the  admirable  pictures  of 
Warton,  with  which,  as  representative  of  the  wisdom  of 
Popery  in  its  generation,  compared  with  the  folly  of  Pu- 
seyism,  we  for  the  present  conclude.  It  is  of  the  mediaeval 
style  that  the  poet  speaks :  — 

"Ye  brawny  prophets,  that,  in  robes  so  rich< 
At  distance  due  possess  the  crisped  niche; 
Te  saints,  who,  clad  in  crimson's  bright  array. 
More  pride  than  humble  poverty  display; 
Ye  virgins  meek,  that  wear  the  palmy  crown 
Of  patient  faith,  and  yet  so  fiercely  frown; 
Ye  angels,  that  from  clouds  of  gold  recline, 
But  boast  no  semblance  to  a  race  divine ; 
Shapes  that  with  one  broad  glare  the  gazer  strike; 
Kings,  bishops,  nuns,  apostles,  all  alike;  — 
No  more  the  sacred  window's  round  disgrace, 
Bat  yeld  to  Grecian  groups  the  opening  space. 
*•  *  *  * 

And  now  I  view,  instead,  the  chaste  design. 
The  just  proportion,  and  the  genuine  line; 
Those  native  portraitures  of  Attic  art, 
That  from  the  lucid  surface  seem  to  start; 
The  doubtful  radiance  of  contending  dyes, 
That  faintly  mingle,  yet  distinctly  rise 
'Twixt  light  and  shade;  the  transitory  strife, 
The  feature  blooming  with  immortal  life; 
The  stole,  in  causal  foldings  taught  to  flow. 
Not  with  ambitious  ornaments  to  glow; 
The  tread  majestic,  and  the  beaming  eye. 
That,  lifted,  speaks  its  commerce  with  the  sky; 
Heaven's  golden  emanation,  gleaming  mild 
O'er  the  mean  cradle  of  the  virgin's  child. 
«  «  «  « 

27* 


SI  8  LITERART  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

Thy  powerful  hand  has  broke  the  Gothic  chain. 
And  brought  the  bosom  back  to  trii.L  again,  — 
To  truth,  by  no  peculiar  taste  confined. 
Whose  universal  pattern  strikes  mankind." 


SE00in>  ARTICLE. 

I  found  the  various  articles  of  the  Exhibition  ranged 
under  the  four  great  heads  of  raw  materials,  manufactures, 
machinery,  and  the  fine  arts.  In  the  first  department 
I  saw  the  stuff,  whether  furnished  by  the  bowels  of  the 
earth  or  produced  on  its  surface,  on  which  man  has  to 
work ;  in  the  second,  that  into  which,  for  purposes  of  use 
or  of  ornament,  he  succeeds  in  fashioning  it ;  in  the  third, 
his  various  most  ingenious  modes  of  making  dead  matter 
his  fellow-laborer  and  slave  in  the  task  of  moulding  the 
stubborn  materials  into  shape  and  form ;  and  in  the  fourth, 
his  strainings  after  something  higher  than  mere  utility,  and 
his  wonderful  ability  of  creating  a  perfection  in  form  and 
expression  greater  than  that  which  he  finds  in  living  na- 
ture. I  could  have  wished  that  into  this  last  department 
fine  pictures,  as  certainly  as  fine  statues,  had  been  admis- 
sible. The  display  of  either  was  not  properly  the  object 
of  the  Great  Exhibition  ;  and  yet  it  would  have  been 
incomplete  without  them.  From  the  two  sister  arts,  — 
those  of  the  painter  and  of  the  statuary,  —  all  that  im- 
parted elegance  and  beauty  to  the  labors  of  the  manufac- 
turer had  been  derived.  The  workers  in  wood,  stone,  and 
metal  had  borrowed  their  delicate  sculpturings  from  the 
statuary ;  the  workers  in  silk  and  tliread,  in  clay  and  in 
glass,  in  dyes  and  in  paints,  in  japans  and  in  varnishes, 
had  borrowed  their  choicest  patterns  from  the  painter; 
all  that  added  beauty  to  comfort  in  the  implements  and 
appliances  of  a  high  civilization  had  been  derived  from  the 
twin  arts ;  they  had  thrown,  as  if  by  reflection,  the  flush  of 


IMTK^.SSIONS   OF  THE   GREAT  EXHIBITION.  319 

gen  t>  on  the  common  and  ordinary  things  of  life  ;  I  saw 
their  vivid  irapiess  at  almost  every  stall ;  and  as  sculpture 
was  present  in  some  of  her  higher  productions,  I  hold  that 
painting  in  some  of  her  higher  productions  should  have 
been  present  also,  as  that  other  art  which,  in  the  staple 
productions  of  tne  Exhibition,  had  added  beauty  to  com- 
fort, and  the  exquisite  and  the  ideal  to  the  common  and 
the  ordinary. 

In  examining  the  raw  materials  furnished  by  the  various 
countries  of  the  world,  some  of  them  many  thousand  miles 
apart,  what  first  struck  was  the  great  uniformity  of  character 
and  appearance  which  prevailed  among  the  sections  devoted 
to  mineral  and  mining  products,  and  the  great  divereity 
which  marked  tfie  animal  and  vegetable  ones.  Whatever 
was  furnished  by  the  primary  rocks  bore  almost  the  same 
character  all  over  the  world.  The  granites  and  porphyries 
of  the  southern  hemisphere  differed  in  no  respect  from  those 
of  the  northern  one ;  or  the  iron,  lead,  and  copper  ores  of 
the  Old  World  from  those  of  the  New,  Even  specimens 
sent  by  one  state  or  kingdom  as  marvels  from  their  size  or 
purity,  were  in  most  cases  lufly  matched  by  specimens  of 
the  same  kmd  sent  by  some  other  state  or  kingdom  thou- 
sands of  milos  apart.  Russia,  for  instance,  furnished  plates 
of  mica  a  full  foot  across ;  but  then  the  United  States  did 
the  same  ;  and  a  mass  of  virgin  copper  from  Massachusetts, 
which  weighed  two  thousand  five  hundred  and  forty-four 
pounds,  was  more  than  matched  by  a  block  of  similar  cop- 
per from  Trenanze  in  Cornwall,  which  weighed  only  two 
thousand  five  hundred  pounds,  but  was  merely  a  portion 
of  a  mass  fifty  supei-ficial  feet  in  extent,  of  so  much  greater 
weight  that  it  could  not  be  raised  entire  out  of  the  mine. 
The  frequent  occurrence  of  copper  in  a  virgin  —  that  is, 
pure  and  malleable  —  state,  among  the  ores  of  the  world, 
as  presented  to  view  in  the  Exhibition,  threw  light  on  the 
place  which  the  bronze  age  holds  in  the  chronology  of  the 
antiquary.  Its  place  is  always  second  to  the  age  of  stone. 
All  the  iron  ores  exhibited  existed  as  mere  stones.      If  a 


320  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTinC. 

bit  of  virgin  iron  be  here  and  there  occasionally  found, 
the  chemist  ascertains  that,  unlike  any  of  the  iron  of  earth, 
it  is  mixed  with  nickel  and  chrome,  and  concludes  that  it 
came  as  a  meteorolite  from  heaven  ;  for  it  is  still  doubtful 
whether  there  be  properly  any  virgin  ii'on  on  earth  which 
the  earth  itself  has  pi"oduced  ;  at  least,  if  it  at  all  exists, 
it  is  a  greatly  rarer  substance  than  gold.  And  iron  in  the 
stony  state  is  a  much  less  eligible  substance  for  tool  or 
weapon  making  than  ordinary  stone.  But  virgin  copper 
is  greatly  superior  to  either  flint  or  jasper  in  at  least  duc- 
tility ;  and  such  is  its  purity,  that  the  savage  who  found 
the  first  mass  of  it  in  the  rock  could  beat  it  out  into  a 
sword  or  spear-head,  with  simply  one  stone  for  his  anvil 
and  another  for  his  hammer.  In  every  country  of  the 
world  in  which  copper  is  to  be  found  at  all,  the  copper  or 
bronze  age  is  found  to  have  come  immediately  after  that 
of  stone,  and  in  advance  of  that  of  iron.  That  resem- 
blance borne  among  themselves  by  the  mineral  productions 
of  the  earth  in  all  countries,  which  the  Exhibition  made 
so  strikingly  manifest,  has  been  remarked  both  by  Hum- 
boldt and  by  Captain  Basil  Hall.  "  Humboldt,"  says  the 
latter  writer,  in  his  voyage  to  Loo  Choo,  "  somewhere  i-e- 
marks  the  wonderful  uniformity  which  obtains  in  the  rocks 
forming  the  crust  of  the  globe,  and  contrasts  this  regularity 
with  the  diversity  prevailing  in  every  other  branch  of 
natural  histoi'y.  The  truth  of  this  remark  was  often  for- 
cibly impressed  upon  our  notice  during  the  present  voyage ; 
for.  wherever  we  went,  the  vegetable,  the  animal,  and  the 
moral  kingdom,  if  I  may  use  such  an  expression,  were  dis- 
covered to  be  infinitely  varied  :  even  the  aspect  of  the 
skies  was  changed  ;  and  new  constellations  and  new  cli- 
mates cooperated  to  make  us  sensible  that  we  were  far 
from  home.  But  on  turning  our  eyes  to  the  rocks  upon 
which  we  were  standing,  we  instantly  discovered  the  most 
exact  resemblance  to  what  we  had  seen  elsewhere." 

There  were,  however,  a  few  centres  to  be  found  in  this 
Exhibition  of  the  world's  industry,  where  the  production 


IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   GREAT  EXHIBITION.  321 

of  some  mineral  in  larger  and  finer  masses  than  it  had  beeK 
detected  elsewhere,  among  at  least  the  civilized  nations, 
had  originated  some  branch  of  art  or  manufacture  unique 
in  the  show.  Of  this,  perhaps  the  most  striking  example 
was  furnished  by  the  Russian  department,  where  the  mal- 
achite furniture  and  ornaments,  wholly  unlike  aught  dis- 
played in  any  other  section,  were  of  the  most  gorgeous 
and  impressive  beauty.  A  few  specimens  of  the  material 
in  its  rude  state  lay  on  a  table  beside  the  wrought  articles, 
and  were  certainly  of  much  greater  size  and  mass  than 
any  specimens  of  the  mineral  which  I  had  hitherto  seen  in 
any  collection.  One  fragment  seemed  about  a  foot  square 
on  its  larger  surface,  and  from  six  to  eight  inches  in  depth. 
Malachite  is  one  of  the  ores  of  copper.  It  consists  of  from 
fifty  to  sixty  per  cent,  of  that  metal,  combined  with  oxygen, 
carbonic  acid  gas,  and  water,  in  the  solid  form ;  it  may,  in 
fine,  be  regarded  as  a  green  verdigris,  hardened  by  its  union 
with  the  gases  into  a  compact  marble,  susceptible  of  a 
fine  polish,  and  occurring  usually  in  cavities  in  the  stalac- 
titical  or  botryoidal  form.  Its  color  internally  is  found  to 
vary  from  darker  to  lighter,  as  in  most  stalactites,  in  grace- 
ful lines  parallel  to  its  lines  of  surface,  and  that  speak,  in 
those  flowing  curves,  of  aqueous  deposition.  The  worker 
in  malachite  cuts  it  up  into  thin  veneers,  which,  according 
to  the  nature  of  his  work,  he  lays  down  upon  a  ground 
either  of  stone  or  of  metal,  taking  care  that  the  curve  of 
one  fragment  merges  gracefully  into  the  curves  of  the 
neighboring  ones ;  and  thus  large  and  apparently  contin- 
uous planes  of  the  substance  are  formed,  as  in  tables, 
chimney-pieces,  and  doors  ;  or  it  is  curved  and  hollowed 
so  as  to  wrap  round  noble  vases  bordered  with  gold,  or 
even  wrought  into  ornately  carved  chairs.  The  beauty  of 
the  articles  thus  produced  is  so  great  that  they  formed 
one  of  the  centres  of  the  Exhibition,  upon  whicli  the  liv- 
ing tide  constantly  set  in  ;  but  their  great  cost  must 
restrict  their  use  to  what  their  exquisite  beauty  peculiarly 
fits  them  to  grace,  —  the  palaces  of  princes  and  the  man- 


822  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

sions  of  nobles.  One  magnificent  door  of  this  substance, 
which  from  top  to  bottom  looked  like  an  opaque  emerald, 
was  valued,  we  understood,  at  about  ten  thousand  pounds 
sterling. 

The  vegetable  and  animal  substances  exhibited  under 
the  head  of  raw  materials  formed  a  marked  contrast,  in 
their  great  divei'sity,  to  the  mining  and  mineral  products. 
In  the  colonial  department,  almost  every  climate  and  zone 
sent  specimens  of  its  plants  and  trees,  its  mammals,  rep- 
tiles, fishes,  and  birds ;  and  the  variety  was  of  course  very 
great.  There  were,  however,  a  few  of  the  mineral  pro- 
ducts of  the  latter  geological  ages  that  came  under  the 
same  law  of  diversity  as  that  which  obtained  among  the 
plants,  and  animals.  Coal  and  the  coal  plants,  judging 
from  the  specimens,  seem  to  bear  well-nigh  the  same  char- 
acter all  over  the  world,  and  to  be  spread  very  widely  in 
each  hemisphere  ;  but  amber,  the  fossilized  resin  of  an  ex- 
tinct species  of  pine,  seems  very  much  restricted,  like  some 
of  our  existing  pines,  to  a  European  centre;  and  though 
there  were  specimens  in  the  Exhibitio.i  furnished  from  va- 
rious European  localities,  —  among  the  rest,  from  the  Nor- 
folk coast,  —  all  the  finer  and  larger  specimens  came,  we 
found,  from  Northern  Germany,  and  in  especial  from  the 
southern  coast  of  the  Baltic.  In  the  glass  case  of  one  ex- 
hibitor, beautiful  pieces  of  amber,  dug  out  of  the  ground, 
lay  side  by  side  with  fragments  of  the  fossil  pine  (pinus 
succimfer,which  had  produced  it ;  in  another  there  were 
large  masses  whijh  had  been  cast  up  by  the  sea,  of  a  quality 
so  fine  that  similar  masses  have  been  sold  at  the  rate  of  a 
hundred  dollars  per  pound  weight ;  in  yet  another  case 
there  were  specimens  of  the  various  implements  and  orna- 
ments into  which  amber  is  formed,  and  which  rendered  it 
of  old,  and  in  some  degree  still,  an  important  article  of 
commerce  ;  and  in  yet  another  and  vastly  more  interesting 
case  still,  had  one  but  the  time  and  opportunity  necessary 
to  observation,  there  was  a  set  of  specimens  of  amber  se- 
lected for  the  sake  of  the  organisms,  vegetable  and  animal, 


IMPRESSIONS   OF  THE  GREAT  EXHIBITION.  323 

wbich  they  contained,  and  which  had  taken  —  so  said  the 
catalogue  —  twenty-nve  years  to  collect.  It  is  a  curious 
circumstance,  that  naturalists  have  now  discovered  in  this 
substance  fossilized  fi-agments  of  forty-eight  different  spe- 
cies of  shrubs  and  trees,  and  no  fewer  than  eight  hundred 
different  species  of  insects.  We  looked  with  no  little  re- 
spect on  the  various  specimens  of  amber  furnished  by  the 
Exhibition,  as  of  great  interest  to  the  geologist,  from  the 
circumstance  that  it  has  formed  the  best  of  all  matrices  for 
the  preservation  of  the  minuter  organisms  of  the  later  ter- 
tiary periods  ;  and  of  great  interest  to  the  historian,  from 
the  circumstance  that  it  was  the  means  of  first  awakening 
the  commercial  spirit  in  northern  Europe,  and  of  inducing 
the  equalizing  tides  of  civilization  to  set  in  from  the  shores 
of  the  genial  Mediterranean  to  those  of  the  frozen  Baltic. 
In  the  vegetable  department,  though  the  intertropical 
colonies  sent  their  splendid  exotics,  and  the  woods,  roots 
and  plants  of  the  New  World  contended  with  those  of  the 
Indian  Archipelago  and  the  southern  hemisphere,  I  saw 
nothing  that  at  all  equalled  in  completeness  the  collection 
of  the  Messrs.  Lawson  of  Edinburgh.  It  consists  of  all 
plants,  seeds,  and  trees  which  are  reared  in  Scotland  for 
the  use  of  man  ;  and,  interesting  at  all  times,  it  would 
have  formed,  had  it  been  made  in  the  last  age,  one  of  the 
best  possible  apologetic  defences  for  Scotland  against  the 
gibes  of  the  English.  "Do  you  ever  bring  the  sloe  to  per- 
fection in  your  country?"  inquired  Johnson,  in  one  of  his 
merrier  moods,  of  the  obsequious  Boswell.  The  Messrs. 
Lawson  show  most  conclusively  that  we  bring  to  perfection 
a  great  deal  more.  We  find  it  stated  that  the  making  of 
their  collection  cost  them  about  two  thousand  pounds  ster- 
ling, —  evidence  enough  of  itself  that  the  vegetable  pro- 
ductions of  Scotland  useful  for  food  and  in  the  arts  cannot 
be  few.  There  are  many  Scotchmen,  and  in  especial  Scotch 
women,  who  complain  of  the  climate  of  their  country. 
T  dare  say  it  must  have  occurred  to  some  of  them,  amid 
the  beautiful  specimens  of  the  Messrs.  Lawsons'  collection, 


324  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

that  the  wonder  is,  not  that  the  climate  of  Scotland  should 
be  occasionally  severe,  but  that  in  the  average  it  should  be 
so  mild  and  genial.  There  is  not  another  country  in  the 
world  lying  between  the  fifty-fifth  and  fifty-ninth  degree*)  of 
latitude,  whether  in  the  northern  or  southern  hemisphere, 
that  could  mature  one-half  the  productions  exhibited  by 
the  Messrs.  Lawson.  On  the  American  coast,  under  the 
same  degrees,  the  isothermal  line  is  that  of  the  north  of 
Iceland  ;  the  ground  always  remains  frozen  hard  as  a  rock 
to  the  depth  of  a  few  feet  from  the  surface ;  and  as  the 
winter  sets  in,  the  sea  forms  into  a  continuous  cake  of  ice 
along  the  shores.  The  lines  of  latitude  fairly  taken  into 
account,  we  challenge  for  Scotland  the  finest  climate  and 
the  most  productive  soil  in  the  world.  And  yet,  at  a  time 
comparatively  recent  to  the  geologist,  though,  of  course, 
removed  beyond  the  historic  period,  the  case  was  widely 
different.  The  scratched  and  polished  rocks  of  the  Pleis- 
tocene period,  its  moraines  and  travelled  stones,  its  drift 
gravels,  its  boulder  clays,  and  its  semi-arctic  shells,  testify 
to  an  age  of  ice  and  snow,  of  local  glaciers  and  drifting 
icebergs,  in  which  not  a  tithe  of  the  vegetable  productions 
exhibited  by  the  Messrs.  Lawson  could  have  been  reared 
in  Scotland.  I  am  glad  to  learn  that  this  interesting  col- 
lection, so  honorable  to  the  skill  and  industry  of  the  collec- 
tors, and  which  so  thoroughly  bears  out  the  deductions  of 
science  regarding  the  isothermal  conditions  of  Scotland, 
is  to  be  transferred  entire  to  the  horticultural  museum  at 
Kew  Gardens. 

In  the  exhibition  of  birds  and  beasts,  which  came  in  paii; 
under  the  head  of  materials  derived  from  the  animal  king- 
dom, and  in  part  illustrated  the  art  of  the  animal-stuffer, 
I  saw  some  cabinets  of  rare  interest ;  but  I  could  fain  have 
wished  that  the  general  section  had  been  more  complete. 
Such  a  collection  of  the  birds,  fishes,  and  quadrupeds  of 
Scotland  as  that  which  the  Messrs.  Lawson  exhibited  of  its 
plants  would  have  well  repaid  the  study  of  days.  Nor,  of 
t'ourse,  would  less  of  interest  have  attached  to  the  animals 


IMPRESSIONS  OF   THE   GREAT  EXHIBITION.  325 

of  other  countries,  with  their  rivers  and  seas.  I  saw  one 
tastefully-arranged  case  of  stuffed  birds  from  the  wild  west 
coast  of  Assynt,  and  recognized  in  the  name  of  the  exhibitor, 
Mr.  W.  Dunbar,  an  intelligent  naturalist  resident  at  Loch 
Inver,  whose  freely  communicated  stores  of  knowledge 
occupy,  though  not  always  with  the  due  acknowledgment, 
a  large  space  in  a  jiopular  work  on  Sutherlandshire.  His 
case  contained  chiefly  the  game-birds  of  the  county,  which 
might  be  regarded  either  as  the  raw  material  which  our 
sporting  gentlemen  convert  into  food  at  the  very  moder- 
ate cost,  when  they  are  eminently  successful  in  the  process, 
of  about  thirty  pounds  sterling  per  stone  ;  or,  a  more  pleas- 
ing view,  as  adequately  representative  of  an  important 
portion  of  the  natural  history  of  the  county.  Nothing  could 
be  more  perfectly  life-like  or  natural  than  these  stuffed  birds 
of  Mr.  Dunbar.  The  great  achievement  presented  by  the 
Exhibition,  however,  in  this  department,  was  furnished  by 
a  German  State.  On  no  one  object  under  the  vast  crystal 
roof,  not  even  on  the  Kohinoor  itself,  did  a  greater  tide 
of  visitors  set  in,  whether  on  shilling  or  on  half-crown  days, 
than  on  what  were  known,  though  not  so  entered  in  the 
official  catalogue,  as  "  The  Comical  Creatures  of  Wurtem- 
burg."  The  catalogue  simply  bore  that  Herman  Ploucquet, 
preserver  of  objects  of  natural  history  at  the  lloyal  Mu- 
seum of  Stuttgai'dt,  had  contributed  to  the  show  "  groups 
of  stuffed  animals  and  birds,  nests  of  birds  of  prey,  hawks 
pouncing  upon  owls,"  etc.,  etc. ;  and  certainly  nothing  could 
be  more  natural  and  true  than  these  groups.  They  were 
made  to  represent,  with  all  the  energy  of  life,  the  scenes  so 
frequently  enacted  in  the  animal  world.  It  was  not,  how- 
ever, to  the  purely  natural  that  the  Exhibition  owed  its 
interest,  but  to  the  introduction  of  an  idea  long  familiar  to 
the  poet  and  the  fabulist,  and  which  painting  and  sculp- 
ture, in  at  least  some  of  their  humble  departments,  have 
borrowed  from  literature,  but  which,  to  at  least  the  bird 
and  animal  stuffer,  seems  to  be  new.  Most  of  Mr.  Plouc- 
quet's  groups,  though  animals  are  the  actors,  represent 
28 


326  LITEKART  AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

scenes,  not  of  animal,  but  of  human  life.  The  "  Batracho- 
maomachia"  of  Homer,  in  which  frogs  and  mice  enact  the 
part  of  the  heroes  of  the  Trojan  war,  and  "  make  an  Iliad 
of  a  day's  camjoaign,"  furnished  merriment  to  the  old  Greeks, 
^sop  and  his  numerous  imitators  followed  in  the  same 
wake  ;  until  at  length  the  representation  of  men  under  the 
forms,  and  bearing  the  characters  of  animals,  became  one 
of  the  commonest  of  literary  ideas.  And  from  literature  it 
found  its  way,  as  we  have  said,  into  painting  and  sculpture. 
But  the  introduction  of  the  animals  themselves  into  such 
scenes  seems  to  be  anew,  and,  judging  from  the  great  pop- 
ularity of  Ploucquet's  figures,  a  most  successful  idea.  It 
IS  interesting,  and  really  not  uninstructive,  to  mark  how 
thoroughly  the  animal  physiognomy  can  be  made  to  express 
at  least  the  lower  passions  and  more  earthy  moods  of  the 
human  subject.  One  of  the  stoi'ies  illustrated  by  the  in- 
genious German  is  an  eminently  popular  one  on  the  Con- 
tinent, —  that  of  Reynard  the  Fox.  "  Among  the  jjeople," 
says  Carlyle,  "  it  was  long  a  house-book  and  universal  best 
companion.  It  has  been  lectured  on  in  universities,  quoted 
in  imperial  council-halls,  lain  on  the  toilets  of  princes,  and 
been  thumbed  to  pieces  on  the  bench  of  artisans."  Rey- 
nard bears,  of  course,  in  the  story,  his  character  of  consum- 
mate cunning  and  address ;  and  in  the  opening  scene,  where 
a  bona  fide  fox  is  introduced,  lolling  at  his  ease  on  a  sofa, 
with  his  hind  legs  set  across,  his  tail  issuing  from  between 
them  and  curled  jauntily  round  his  left  fore-paw,  and  his 
head  reclining  upon  his  right,  there  is  an  expression  of  cool, 
calculating  cunning,  as  strongly,  we  had  almost  said  as 
artistically  marked,  as  in  the  Lovat  or  the  John  Wilkea 
of  Hof  arth. 


CRITICISM   FOR   THE   UNINITIATED.  327 


II. 

CRITICISM  FOB  THE  UNINITIATED. 

FIEST  AETICLE. 

We  have  just  been  spending  a  few  hours  for  the  first 
time  among  the  pictures  of  the  Exhibition  of  the  Royal 
Scottish  Academy,  and  spending  them  very  agreeably.  A 
good  picture  is  inferior  in  value  to  only  a  good  book ;  and 
in  one  important  respect  at  least  bad  ones  are  better  than 
inferior  books,  seeing  one  can  determine  their  true  charac- 
ter at  scarce  any  expense  of  time.  There  are  no  second 
and  third  pages  to  turn  ^fter  perusing  the  first ;  and  if  there 
be  nothing  to  strike  or  nothing  to  please,  this  negative 
quality  of  the  piece,  as  fatal  surely  to  a  picture  as  to  a  book, 
is  discovered  at  a  cost  proportioned  to  its  value.  The  con- 
noisseur, like  tlie  critic,  has  his  rules  of  art  and  his  vocab- 
ulary ;  but  though  some  eyes  are  doubtlessly  more  prac- 
tised than  others,  and  some  judgments  better  informed,  I 
do  not  deem  the  art  itself  of  very  difficult  attainment.  To 
please  is  the  grand  end  of  the  painter;  and  he  can  attain 
his  object  in  only  two  difierent  ways,  —  by  either  a  close 
imitation  of  the  objects  he  represents,  or  by  the  choice  of 
objects  interesting  in  themselves.  Now,  it  needs  no  art 
whatever  to  decide  whether  or  no  he  has  succeeded  in  the 
first  and  simpler  department,  —  the  faithful  representation 
of  what  he  intended  to  delineate.  The  birds  that  pecked 
at  the  grapes  of  the  ancient  painter ;  the  countryman  who 
attempted  to  scale  the  painted  flight  of  stairs ;  the  artist 
wlio  stretched  his  hand  to  draw  aside  the  well-simulated 
curtain  which  seemed  to  half-conceal  the  work  of  his  rival, 
—  all  these  were  equally  skilful  judges.    Even  the  decision 


328  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

of  the  birds  themselves  was  such  a  decision  as  no  connois- 
seur would  have  dared  dispute;  and  many  an  ingenious 
piece  of  criticism  has  the  memory  of  it  survived.  In  the 
same  way,  the  mastiff  who  came  running  up  to  his  master's 
portrait  wagging  his  tail  was  a  perfectly  qualified  judge 
of  its  fidelity.  The  other  department  of  the  art  ^  the 
choice  of  subjects  —  requires  higher  qualities  in  the  con- 
noisseur ;  but  it  is  not  exclusively  in  picture-galleries  that 
his  skill  is  to  be  acquired.  Nay,  I  am  mistaken  if  it  may 
not  be  acquired  outside  of  the  picture-gallery  altogether, 
and  in  utter  ignorance  of  the  technicalities  of  the  art.  Take 
landscape,  for  instance.  Who  can  doubt  that  Shenstone, 
who  had  of  all  men  the  most  exquisite  eye  for  the  real 
scenes  of  nature,  must  have  had  an  eye  equally  exquisite 
for  those  very  scenes  when  transferred  to  canvas  ?  He 
was  more  than  a  great  connoisseur:  he  was  also  a  great 
artist,  —  an  artist  who  dealt  in  realities  exclusively,  and 
planted  his  thickets  and  formed  his  waterfalls  with  all 
the  exquisite  perception  and  inventive  originality  of  high 
genius.  No  one  can  suppose  that  Shenstone's  taste  and 
skill  would  not  have  served  him  in  as  good  stead  amid  a 
collection  of  pictures  as  at  Hagley  or  in  the  Leasowes; 
or  that,  however  unskilled  in  the  connoisseur's  vocabulary, 
he  would  have  proved  other  than  a  first-rate  connoisseur. 

The  "poet's  lyre,"  says  Cowper,  "must  be  the  poet's 
heart ; "  he  must  feel  warmly  before  he  can  express  strongly. 
I  suppose  nearly  the  same  remark  may  be  applied  both  to 
the  painter  iind  the  men  best  qualified  to  appreciate  the 
painter's  productions.  An  intense  feeling  of  the  beautiful 
and  a  nice  perception  of  it  invariably  go  together  ;  and 
unless  a  person  has  experienced  this  feeling,  in  the  first 
instance,  amid  the  delights  of  the  original  nature,  there  is 
no  virtue  in  rules  or  phrases  to  convey  it  to  him  from  the 
painter's  copy.  I  am  not  aware  that  Professor  Wilson 
knows  anything  of  these  miles  or  phrases.  Certain  I  am, 
however,  that  this  master  of  gorgeous  description,  who 
makes  the  reader  more  than  see  the  scene  he  paints,  for  he 


CRITICISM   FOR   THE   UNINITIATED.  329 

makes  him  feel  it  too,  must  have  an  exquisite  eye  for  land- 
Bcape,  whether  it  be  on  or  off  canvas.  Ho  is  one  of  the 
born  connoisseurs.  And  what  this  man  of  genius  possesses 
in  so  great  a  degree  is  possessed  as  really,  though  in  im- 
mensely varied  gradations,  by  almost  all.  Akenside  de- 
scribes the  untaught  peasant  lingering  delighted  amid  the 
glories  of  a  splendid  sunset,  intensely  happy,  and  yet 
scarcely  able  to  say  why.  Assuredly  that  same  peasant 
would  be  quite  qualified  to  distinguish  between  a  daub  and 
a  fine  picture.  Imagine  him  passing  homeward,  after  "  his 
long  day's  labor,"  in  one  of  those  exquisite  evenings  of 
early  June  that  live  with  a  "  sunshiny  freshness  in  mem- 
ory," as  Shelley  finely  expresses  it,  long  after  they  have 
])assed.  There  is  a  splendid  drapery  of  clouds  in  the  west, 
tinted  by  those  hues  of  heaven  which  can  be  fully  expressed 
by  neither  thy  words  nor  the  colors  of  earth,  —  those  hues 
of  exquisite  glory  —  of  gold,  and  flame,  and  pearl,  and 
amber  —  which  the  prophets  describe  as  encircling  the 
chariot  of  Deity.  The  sun  rests  in  the  midst,  less  fiercely 
bright  than  when  he  looked  down  from  the  middle  heavens, 
but  dilated  apparently  in  size,  and  more  glorious  to  the 
conception,  because  more  accessible  to  the  eye.  The  land- 
scape below  is  soft  and  pastoral.  There  is  a  dim  undulat- 
ing line  of  blue  hills  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  far-off  sea 
on  the  other.  A  light,  fleecy  cloud  hangs  over  the  distant 
village,  and  seems  a  bar  of  pale  silver  relieved  against  the 
wooded  hill  behind.  A  lonely  burying-ground,  surrounded 
by  ancient  trees,  and  with  the  remains  of  an  old  time-shat- 
tered edifice  rising  in  the  midst,  occupies  the  foreground. 
We  see  the  white  tombstones  glittering  to  the  sun,  and  the 
alternate  bars  of  light  and  shadow  that  mark  more  dimly 
the  sepulchral  ridges  of  yellow  moss  which  rise  so  thickly 
over  the  sward  ;  while  beyond,  on  the  side  of  a  wide- 
spreading  acclivity,  there  is  a  quiet  scene  of  fields,  and 
hedgerows,  and  clumps  of  wood,  with  here  and  there  a 
group  of  white  cottages,  all  basking  in  the  red  light.  And 
mark  the  loiterer,  —  one  of  the  intellectual  peasants  of  our 
28* 


SdO  LITERART   AND    SCIEISTTIFIC. 

own  country,  —  a  well-selected  specimen  of  the  class  which, 
in  at  least  thought,  feeling,  and  power,  has  found  its  meet 
type  and  representative  in 

"  Him  who  walked  in  glory  and  in  joy, 
Following  his  plough  upon  the  mountain-side." 

How  his  steps  become  gradually  fewer  and  more  slow  !  and 
how  at  length,  unconscious  of  aught  except  what  Aken- 
side  exquisitely  describes  as  the  "  form  of  beauty  smiling 
at  his  heart,"  he  stands  still,  to  lose,  in  the  happiness  of  the 
present,  every  gloomier  recollection  of  the  past,  and  every 
<lnvker  anticipation  of  the  future!  Undoubtedly  that  un- 
taught peasant  is  a  connoisseur  of  the  higher  class.  The 
birds  jjeck  the  grapes,  the  mastiflF  recognizes  the  portrait ; 
but  the  peasant  can  judge  of  more  than  mere  likeness, — 
lie  can  exquisitely  feel  the  beautiful;  and  he  is  perfectly 
qualified  to  say  that  the  work  of  art  which  can  reawaken 
in  him  this  feeling  is  assuredly  a  work  of  genius.  But  why 
all  this  wild  radicalism,  this  lowering  of  the  aristocracy  of 
criticism,  this  breaking  down  of  the  fictitious  distinctions 
of  connoisseurship  !  In  the  first  place,  I  am  merely  mak- 
ing my  apology  for  having  derived  very  exquisite  pleasure 
from  even  a  first  visit  to  the  pictures  of  the  Academy ;  and, 
in  the  second,  for  daring  to  do  what  I  am  just  on  the  eve 
of  doing,  — for  daring  to  assure  the  reader,  that,  if  he  has 
an  eye  and  a  heart  for  nature,  he  may  go  there,  however 
unskilled  in  the  rules  of  the  vocabulary  of  criticism,  and 
derive  much  pleasure  from  them  too.  I  am  merely  stand- 
ing up,  as  Earl  Grey  and  Cobbett  have  expressed  it,  for 
my  order,  —  the  uninitiated. 

I  have  spent  some  of  my  happiest  hours  amid  exhibitions 
of  a  different  kind  from  the  Exhibition  in  the  Academy; 
and  some  of  my  most  vivid  recollections  refer  to  scenes 
redolent  of  the  wild  and  the  sublime  of  nature,  and  to  the 
emotions  which  these  have  awakened.  May  I  venture  to 
describe  the  feeling  in  connection  with  one  sweet  scene  — 
a  wooded  dell  in  the  far  north  — in  which  I  have  perhaps 


CRITICISM   FOR   THE   UNINITIATED.  831 

oftenest  experienced  it,  and  which  came  rushing  into  my 
mind  as  I  lingered  in  front  of  one  of  the  richest  landscapes 
of  the  Exhibition  ?  It  is  a  recess  of  deejjest  solitude ;  but 
the  sweet  Highland  stream  that  comes  winding  through  it, 
passing  alternately  from  light  to  shadow  and  from  motion 
to  repose,  imparts  to  it  an  air  of  life  and  animation,  and 
we  do  not  feel  that  it  is  lonely.  Man  is  so  little  an  ani- 
mal, says  Rousseau,  that  he  is  as  effectually  sheltered 
by  a  tree  twenty  feet  in  height  as  by  one  of  sixty.  True ; 
but  his  ideas  are  much  larger  than  himself,  and  he  has  too 
close  a  sympathy  with  nature  not  to  experience  an  ampler 
expansion  of  feeling  under  the  loftier  than  under  the  lower 
cover.  In  this  solitary  dell,  the  banks,  which  on  either 
hand,  at  every  angle  and  indentation,  advance  their  grassy 
ridges  or  retire  in  long,  sloping  hollows,  partake  perhaps 
rather  of  the  picturesque  than  of  the  magnificent;  but  the 
trees  which  rise  along  their  sides,  and  which  for  the  last 
century  have  been  slowly  lifting  themselves  to  the  freer 
air  of  the  upper  region,  look  down  from  more  than  the 
higher  altitude  instanced  by  Rousseau.  Often,  when  the 
evening  sun  was  casting  its  slant  red  beams  athwart  their 
topmost  branches,  and  all  beneath  was  brown  in  the  shade, 
I  have  sauntered  along  this  little  stream,  lost  in  delicious 
musings,  whose  intermingled  train  of  thought  and  feeling 
I  have  no  language  to  convey.  I  have  felt  that  the  cog- 
itative faculty  in  these  moods  had  not  much  of  activity ; 
but  then,  though  it  wrought  slowly,  it  wrought  willingly 
and  unbidden  ;  and  around  every  minute  thought  there 
would  swell  and  expand  an  atmosphere  of  delightful  feel- 
ing, which  somehow  seemed  to  owe  its  origin  as  much  to 
the  magnitude  as  to  the  quiet  beauty  of  the  surrounding  ob- 
jects, and  which  has  reminded  me  fancifully,  but  strongly,  of 
that  minutest  of  all  the  planets,  —  of  the  asteroids  rather, 
—  whose  atmosphere  rises  over  it  to  more  than  ten  times 
the  height  of  the  atmosphere  of  our  own  planet ;  I  have 
looked  up  to  the  branches  that  twisted  and  interlaced 
themselves  so  high  over  head,  and  the  leaves  that  seemed 


S32  LITERARY   AND    SCIENIIPIC. 

sleeping  in  the  light ;  I  have  seen  the  deep  blue  sky  far 
beyond  ;  I  have  caught  glimpses  through  the  chance  vistas 
of  little  open  spaces,  shaggy  with  a  rank  vegetation,  and 
which  I  have  loved  to  deem  the  haunts  of  a  solitude  still 
deeper  than  that  which  surrounded  me ;  I  have  marked 
the  varieties  of  beauty  which  distinguish  the  several  deni- 
zens of  the  forest,  —  the  ash,  with  his  long  massy  arms, 
that  shoot  off  from  the  trunk  at  such  acute  angles,  and  his 
sooty  blossoms  spread  over  him  as  if  he  wore  mourning ; 
the  elm,  with  his  trunk  gnarled  and  furrowed  like  an 
Egyptian  column,  and  his  flake-like  foliage  laid  on  in  strips 
that  lie  nearly  parallel  to  ttie  horizon ;  the  plane,  with  his 
dark  green  leaves  and  dense,  heavy  outline,  like  that  of  a 
thunder-cloud  ;  the  birch,  too,  a  tree  evidently  of  the  gen- 
tler sex,  with  her  long  flowing  tresses  falling  down  to  her 
knee ;  —  and  as  I  looked  above  and  around,  I  lielt  my  heart 
swelling  with  an  exquisite  emotion,  that  feasts  on  the 
grand  and  the  beautiful  as  its  proper  food ;  and  surely  that 
mind  must  be  chilled  and  darkened  by  the  pall  of  a  death- 
like scepticism,  that  does  not  expand  with  love  and  grati- 
tude, under  the  influence  of  so  exquisite  a  feeling,  to  the 
great  and  wonderful  Being  who  has  imparted  so  much  of 
good  and  fair  to  the  forms  of  inanimate  nature,  and  has 
bestowed  on  the  creature  such  a  capacity  of  enjoying 
them. 


SECOND   ARTICLE. 

In  the  middle  of  the  second  exhibition-room,  on  the 
west  side,  there  is  a  picture  of  Allan's  which  almost  every 
visitor  staT-'ls  to  study  and  admire  ;  and  we  observed  not 
a  few  who,  like  ourselves,  came  back  a  second  and  a  third 
time  to  look  at  it  again  and  again.  Let  criticism  say  what 
it  please,  this  is  praise  of  the  very  highest  order.  The 
piece  represents  one  of  the  first  heroes  and  greatest  men 


CRITTCTSM   FOR   THE   UNINITIATED.  333 

of  Scotland,  —  Robert  the  Bruce ;  and  represents  him  when 
greatest  and  noblest,  —  uniting  to  a  courage  truly  heroic 
the  tencferness  and  compassion  of  a  gentle  and  affectionate 
nature.  It  embodies  with  exquisite  truth  Barbour's  aflect- 
ing  story  oi  the  king  and  the  "  poore  lavender." 

The  scene,  as  all  our  readers  must  remember,  is  laid  in 
Ireland.  The  redoubtable  hero  of  Bannockburn  had  been 
compelled  to  retreat  before  the  immensely  superior  forces 
of  the  English  and  their  Irish  allies.  Both  the  retreating 
and  the  pursuing  army  had  been  resting  for  the  night,  — 
the  one  in  a  valley,  the  other  on  an  adjoining  hill;  but  the 
pursuers  were  early  astir,  and  their  long  array  had  been 
seen  from  the  Scottish  encampment  stretching  far  into  the 
background  on  the  ridge  of  the  neighboring  height,  and  all 
in  full  advance.  The  Scotch,  too,  had  been  preparing  for 
a  hasty  retreat ;  Edward  Bruce  and  the  Black  Douglas 
had  mounted  their  war-horses,  and  the  warriors  behind 
were  all  on  foot  and  in  marching  column,  when  they  were 
suddenly  arrested  by  the  voice  of  the  king.  He  had  heard 
a  woman  shrieking  in  despair  when  just  on  the  eve  of 
mounting  his  horse,  and  had  been  told  by  his  attendants, 
in  reply  to  a  hurried  inquiry,  that  one  of  the  female  follow- 
ers of  the  army,  a  "  poore  lavender  "  (that  is,  laundress), 
mother  of  an  infant  who  had  just  been  born,  was  about  to 
be  left  behind,  as  being  too  weak  to  travel,  and  that  she 
was  shrieking  in  utter  terror  at  thoughts  of  falling  into  the 
hands  of  the  Irish,  who  were  accounted  very  cruel.  We 
quote  the  words  of  Sir  Walter,  who  softens,  with  a  tact 
and  delicacy  worthy  of  study,  the  less  tasteful,  though 
scarcely  less  powerful,  narrative  of  the  metrical  historian. 
"  King  Robert  was  silent  for  a  moment  when  he  heard  the 
story,  being  divided  betwixt  the  feeling  of  humanity  occa- 
sioned by  the  poor  woman's  distress,  and  the  danger  to  which 
a  halt  would  expose  his  army.  At  last  he  looked  round 
his  officers  with  eyes  which  kindled  like  fire.  '  Ah,  gen- 
tlemen, never  let  it  be  said  that  a  man  who  was  born  of  a 
woman,  and  nursed  by  a  woman's  tenderness,  should  leave 


334  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

a  mother  and  an  infant  to  the  mercy  of  barbarians.  In  the 
name  of  God^  let  the  odds  and  the  risk  be  what  they  will,  I 
will  fight  Edmund  Sutler  rather  than  leave  these  j^oor  crea- 
tures behind  me. ' " 

The  painter  has  chosen  the  moment  of  this  noble  excla- 
mation for  fixing  the  scene  on  bis  canvas.  King  Robert 
occupies  the  centre,  —  a  wonderfully  perfect  transcript  of 
Sir  Walter's  exquisite  description  in  the  "  Lord  of  the 
Isles,"  and  one  of  the  most  commanding  figures  we  have 
ever  seen.  There  is  a  strength  more  than  Herculean  in 
the  deep  broad  chest  and  the  uplifted  arm,  —  the  very 
arm  which  clave  Sir  Henry  Bohun  to  the  teeth  through 
the  steel  headpiece;  but,  to  employ  the  language  of  Lava- 
ter,  "  it  is  not  the  inert  strength  of  the  rock,  but  the  elastic 
strength  of  the  spring."  The  ease  is  admirable  as  the 
force ;  the  figure  possesses  the  blended  power  of  an  Achil- 
les, alike  unmatched  in  the  race  and  the  combat.  His  look 
is  raised  to  heaven,  —  a  look  intensely  eloquent,  for  it 
unites  the  indomitable  resolution  of  the  unmatched  war- 
rior with  a  devout  awe  for  the  Being  in  whose  strength  he 
has  determined  to  abide  the  battle.  The  features,  too, 
grave  and  rugged  like  those  of  his  countryriien,  possess 
that  beauty  of  expression,  far  surpassing  the  beauty  of  mere 
form,  which  a  mind  conversant  with  high  thoughts  and 
noble  emotions  can  alone  impart  to  the  countenance.  The 
painter  has  drawn  the  Bruce,  mind  and  body,  — the  master- 
spirit of  the  time,  and  through  whom,  under  Providence, 
Scotland  at  this  day  is  a  country  of  free  men,  not  of  de- 
graded helots,  like  at  least  two  thirds  of  the  unfortunate 
Irish. 

On  the  left  of  the  wanior-king  is  the  new-made  mother 
with  her  infant ;  she  is  a  poor  young  creature,  of  simple 
beauty,  —  such  a  one  as  the  Mary  of  Burns  or  the  Jessie 
of  Tannahill.  It  would  really  have  been  a  great  pity  to 
have  left  her  to  the  barbarous,  pitiless  Irish,  —  the  ruthless 
savages  who,  even  in  the  times  of  the  first  Charles,  could 
60  cru(.'lly  destroy  the  Protestant  females  of  the  country, 


CRITICISM   FOR   THE  UXITSTITIATED.  835 

—  quite  as  unable  to  resist,  and  quite  as  unoffending,  as 
the  "poorc  lavender."  There  is  something  very  admirable 
in  the  air  of  lassitude  which  invests  the  whole  figure  :  one 
hand  barely  sustains  the  infant,  which,  in  the  midst  of 
danger  and  extreme  weakness,  she  evidently  regards  with 
all  the  intense,  though  but  newly-awakened,  affection  of 
the  mother ;  the  other  finely-formed  arm  I  had  almost  said 
supports  her  in  her  half-reclining  position ;  but  it  is  by 
rauch  too  weak  for  that,  and  tells  eloquently  its  story  of 
utter  exhaustion  and  recent  suffering.  There  is  much 
good  taste,  too,  shown  in  the  painter's  selection  of  the 
surrounding  attendants ;  in  the  old  woman,  and  in  the 
girl,  who  half-compassionates  the  mother,  half-admires  the 
child  ;  in  the  aged  monk,  too,  evidently  a  good,  benevolent 
man,  who  in  all  probability  directed  the  devotions  of  his 
countrymen  when  they  knelt  at  Bannockburn,  and  who  is 
particularly  well  pleased  that  the  Bruce  has  determined 
rather  to  fight  Edmund  Butler  than  to  desert  the  "  poore 
lavender." 

On  the  king's  right  are  his  brother  Edward  Bruce,  and 
James,  Lord  of  Douglas,  mounted,  as  we  have  said,  on 
their  war-steeds.  Edward  is  well-nigh  as  perfect  a  concep- 
tion as  his  brother  the  king.  It  needs  no  Lavater  to  tell 
us,  from  the  speaking  countenance,  that  the  warrior  on  the 
right  cannot  be  other  than  the  frank,  fearless,  rashly- 
spoken,  affectionate  man,  who  hastily  wished  Bannockburn 
nnfought  because  his  friend  had  been  killed  in  the  battle. 
His  whole  figure  is  instinct  with  character.  There  he 
stands,  a  capital  man-at-arms,  first  in  the  charge  and  last 
in  the  retreat;  especially  good  at  a  light  joke  too,  partic- 
ularly when  matters  come  to  the  worst ;  but  not  at  all 
to  be  trusted  as  a  leader.  He  is  right  well  pleased  on  this 
occasion  with  brother  Robert.  "  Fight  Edmund  Butler ! 
ay,  ten  Edmund  Butlers,  if  they  choose  to  come ;  but  we 
can't  leave  the  poor  woman."  Possibly  enough,  however, 
the  poor  woman  would  have  been  left  had  Edward  been 
fii'st  in  command,  —  not   certainly  from  any  indifference. 


336  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

but  out  of  sheer  thoughtlessness.     Edward  would  never 
have  thought  of  asking  what  the  cry  meant. 

We  are  not  quite  so  satisfied  with  the  Black  Douglas. 
Pie  is  a  stalwart  warrior,  keen  and  true  in  the  hour  of 
danger  as  his  steel  battleaxe  ;  but  the  tenderness  of  the 
character  is  wanting.  The  painter  has  given  us  rather  the 
Black  Douglas  of  Sir  Walter  as  drawn  in  his  last  melan- 
choly production,  "  Castle  Dangerous,"  when  the  mind  of 
our  greatest  master  of  character  was  more  than  half  gone, 
than  the  good  Lord  James  of  Barbour.  Barbour  devotes 
an  entire  page  to  the  personal  appearance  of  the  Douglas, 
and  certifies  his  description  by  assuring  the  reader  that 
he  had  derived  his  information  solely  from  men  who  had 
seen  him  with  their  own  eyes.  His  metrical  history  was 
given  to  the  country  rather  less  than  half  a  century  after 
the  death  of  his  hero.  He  describes  him  as  tall  and  im- 
mensely powerful,  and  with  a  "  visage  some  dele  gray ; " 
and  the  painter,  true  to  the  description,  has  made  him  just 
gray  enough.  The  expression,  however,  was  peculiarly 
soft,  modest,  and  pleasing  ;  and,  in  accordance  with  his 
appearance,  he  spoke  with  a  slight  lisp,  "  which  set  him 
wonder  well."  He  was  a  mighty  favorite,  too,  we  are  told, 
■with  the  ladies  of  King  Robert's  company,  the  Queen,  and 
her  attendants,  —  he  was  so  gentle  and  so  amusing ;  and 
when,  early  in  the  king's  career,  they  were  hard  beset 
among  the  mountains,  no  one  exerted  himself  half  so  much 
as  the  Douglas  in  supplying  all  their  little  and  all  their 
great  wants,  —  in  i)roviding  them  with  venison  from  the 
hillside  and  fish  from  the  river,  or,  as  the  Arch-Dean 
quite  as  well  expresses  it,  "  in  getting  them  meit."  After 
dwelling,  however,  on  all  his  amiabilities  of  character  and 
expression,  and  particularly  the  latter,  the  historian  telli 
us  in  his  hai')piest  manner,  — 

"  But  who  in  baittle  mocht  him  see, 
Another  countenance  had  hee." 

Old  James  Melville  gives  us  nearly  a  similar  description  of 


CRinCTSM  FOR  THE  TmmiTIATED.  3-57 

Kircaldy  of  Grange,  "  Anelyon  in  thefeild,and  ane  lambe  in 
the  hous  ;  "  and  what  does  not  quite  please  us  in  the  Doug- 
las of  the  picture,  because  it  runs  somewhat  counter  to  oui 
associations,  is,  that,  though  the  spectator  of  a  scene  so 
moving,  he  sliould  yet  have  got  on  his  battle  countenance. 
We  have  the  lion,  not  the  lamb.  This,  however,  is  not 
intended  for  criticism.  The  picker  of  minute  faults  in 
works  of  great  genius  reminds  us  always  of  the  philosophei 
in  Wordsworth's  epitaph,  —  the  "  man  who  could  peep 
and  botanize  upon  his  mother's  grave." 

There  is  another  point  in  the  picture  of  great  interest, 
and  very  admirably  brought  out.  It  is  at  once  exquisitely 
true  to  nature,  and  illustrates  finely  one  of  the  most  mas- 
terly strokes  in  Barbour.  We  are  told  by  the  ancient  poet, 
that  when  the  king,  single-handed,  had  defended  the  rocky 
pass  beside  the  ford  against  the  troop  of  Galloway  men, 
and  had  succeeded  in  beating  them  back,  after  "  dotting 
the  upgang  with  slain  horse  and  men,"  his  followers,  just 
awakened  from  the  slumbers  in  which  he  had  been  watch- 
ing them  so  sedulously,  came  rushing  up  to  him.  They 
found  him  sitting  bareheaded  beside  the  ford,  "  for  he  was 
het,"  and  had  taken  off  his  helmet,  to  breathe  the  more  freely 
after  his  hard  exercise.  The  exploit  had  gone  far  beyond 
all  they  had  ever  seen  him  accomplish  before.  He  had 
defended  them  against  "  a  hail  troop,  him  alone  ;"  and  they 
came  crowding  round  to  get  a  glimpse  of  him.  The  very 
men  who  were  with  him  every  day,  and  who  saw  him  al- 
most every  minute,  were  actually  jostling  one  another, 
that  they  might  look  at  him.  Now,  this  is  surely  exquis- 
ite nature;  and  the  idea  is  as  happily  brought  out  by 
Allan  as  by  Barbour  himself.  The  men  are  crowding  to 
see  their  king ;  and  never  were  there  countenances  more 
eloquent.  There  is  love  and  admiration  in  every  feature; 
and  we  feel  that  such  a  general  with  such  followers  could 
be  in  no  imminent  danger  of  defeat,  after  all,  from  the 
multitudes  of  Edmund  Butler.  The  minor  details  of  the 
picture  seem  to  be  finely  managed.  There  is  a  clear,  gray 
29 


338  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

light ;  the  sun  has  not  yet  risen,  but  it  is  on  the  eve  of 
rising ;  all  is  seen  clearly  that  any  one  wishes  to  see,  and 
the  rest  is  thrown  into  the  soft,  bluish,  tinted  shade  pecu- 
liar to  the  hour.  Randolph  appears  in  the  middle  distance  ; 
and  no  person  acquainted  with  the  strictly  just  but  stem- 
hearted  warrior  would  desire  to  see  him  brought  a  step 
nearer.  He  would  merely  have  come  to  say,  with  that 
severe  face  of  his,  that  he  really  thought  there  was  too 
much  ado  about  a  poor  washerwoman  ;  but  that,  if  Ed- 
mund Butler  was  to  be  met  with,  why,  he  would  just  meet 
with  him. 

Edmund  Butler,  however,  was  not  met  with  on  this 
occasion.  The  wary  leader  knew  that  Robert  the  Bruce 
was  the  first  general  of  his  age  ;  and  that  when  he  halted 
to  oifer  battle,  it  could  not  be  without  some  hidden  rea- 
son, which  rendered  it  no  safe  matter  to  accept  the  chal- 
lenge which  the  halt  implied.  And  so  the  English  leader 
halted  too,  until  the  king  resumed  his  march  ;  and  thus 
the  "  poore  lavender  "  was  saved  at  no  actual  expense  to 
her  countrymen.  The  story  is  one  of  those  which  deserve 
to  live ;  nor  is  it  probable  that  what  Allan  has  painted, 
and  Sir  Walter  described,  "  the  country  will  willingly  let 
die."  We  felt,  when  standing  in  front  of  this  admirable 
picture,  that  the  art  of  the  painter,  all  unfitted  as  it  is  for 
serving  devotional  purposes,  may  yet  be  well  employed  in 
giving  eflTect  to  a  moral  one. 


THTBD   ABnCLB.       \ 

In  estimating  the  real  strength  of  a  country,  one  has 
always  to  take  into  account  its  past  history.  The  statistics 
of  its  existing  condition  are  no  doubt  very  important.  It 
is  well  to  know  the  exact  amount  of  its  population,  and 
the  extent  of  its  resources.  It  is  a  great  deal  more  impor- 
tant, however,  to  ascertain  what  its  people  were  doing  a 


CRITICTSM  FOR  THE  UNINITIATED.  339 

century  or  two  ago,  —  what  tlie  nature  of  their  contests 
and  their  success  in  thera,  and  what  the  issue  of  their  bat- 
tles. It  is  not  enough  to  count  heads,  or  to  calculate  on 
the  mere  physical  power  of  a  certain  quantum  of  thews 
and  sinews.  If  the  country's  history  be  that  of  an  en- 
glaved  and  degraded  race,  who  took  their  law  from  every 
new  invader,  neither  its  physical  strength  nor  the  great- 
ness of  its  revenues  matters  anything  :  it  is  utterly  weak 
and  powerless.  If,  on  the  contrary,  its  battles  were  hard- 
fought,  and  terminated  either  in  signal  victory  on  the  part 
of  its  people,  or  in  a  defeat  that  led  merely  to  another  bat- 
tle, —  if,  in  all  its  struggles,  however  protracted,  the  enemy 
was  eventually  borne  down,  and  the  object  of  the  struggle 
secured,  —  depend  upon  it,  that  country,  whether  it  reckon 
its  population  by  thousands  or  by  millions,  is  rich  in  the 
elements  of  power.  The  national  history  in  these  cases  is 
more  than  a  test  of  character;  —  it  is  also  an  ingredient  of 
strength.  The  past  breathes  its  invigorating  influences 
upon  the  present ;  the  battles  won  centuries  before  become 
direct  guarantees,  through  the  enthusiasm  which  they 
awaken,  for  the  issue  of  battles  to  be  fought  in  the  future  ; 
the  names  of  the  brave  and  the  good  among  the  ancestors 
become  watchwords  of  tremendous  efficacy  to  the  descend- 
ants ;  the  childi-en  "  honor  their  fathers,"  and  "  their  days, 
therefore,  shall  be  long  in  the  land." 

But  Avhat  has  all  this  to  do  with  criticism?  A  great 
deal.  As  you  enter  the  second  exhibition-room,  turn  just 
two  steps  to  the  left,  and  examine  the  large  picture  before 
you.  It  is  one  of  the  masterpieces  of  Harvey,  —  "  The 
Covenanters'  Communion  ;  "  and  very  rarely  has  the  same 
extent  of  canvas  borne  the  impress  of  an  equal  amount  of 
thought  or  feeling.  The  Covenanters  themselves  are  be- 
fore us,  and  we  return  to  the  times  of  which,  according  to 
"Wordsworth,  the  "  echo  rings  through  Scotland  till  this 
hour."  Not  in  vain  did  these  devoted  people  assemble  to 
worship  God  among  the  hills;  not  in  vain  did  these  vener- 
able men,  these  delicate  women  and  tender  maidens,  un. 


840  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

hesitatingly  lay  down  their  lives  for  the  cause  of  Christ  and 
his  church.  Their  solitary  graves  form  no  small  portion 
of  the  strength  and  riches  of  the  country.  They  retain  a 
vivifying  power,  like  the  grave  of  Elisha,  into  which  when 
the  dead  man  was  thrown  he  straightway  revived.  Those 
opponents  of  the  church  who  assert,  in  the  present  struggle, 
that  the  cherished  memory  of  our  martyrs  serves  only  to 
foster  a  spirit  of  fanatical  pride  among  the  people,  are  as 
opposed  to  right  reason  as  devoid  of  true  feeling.  It  fos- 
ters a  truly  conservative  spirit,  which  it  is  well  and  wise 
to  cherish  ;  and  one  of  the  eminently  wholesome  effects  of 
the  present  struggle  is  the  reciprocity  of  feeling,  if  we  may 
so  express  ourselves,  which  it  awakens  between  the  past 
and  the  present.  The  determination  of  the  present  revives 
the  memory  of  the  past,  and  the  memory  of  the  past  gives 
tenfold  force  and  effect  to  the  determination  of  the  present. 
Martrys  never  die  in  vain.  We  doubt  not  there  is  a  time 
coming  when  even  the  memory  of  the  noble  Spaniards  of 
the  sixteenth  century  who  perished  unseen,  for  their  adher- 
ence to  Protestantism,  in  the  dungeons  of  the  Inquisition, 
and  that  of  the  noble  Venetians  of  the  same  dark  period 
who  were  consigned  at  midnight,  and  in  chains,  for  the 
same  sacred  cause,  to  the  depths  of  the  Adriatic,  will  yet 
awaken  among  their  countrymen,  as  an  animating  spirit  to 
urge  them  on  with  double  vigor  to  the  attack,  when  Baby- 
lon is  to  be  utterly  destroyed.  Most  assuredly,  Scotland 
at  least  has  not  yet  reaped  the  entire  benefit  which  she  is 
to  derive  from  the  blood  of  her  martyrs.  The  commonest 
seeds  retain  their  vitality  for  centuries;  the  seed  of  the 
church  retains  its  vitality  for  centuries  too. 

I  shall  attempt  a  description  of  Harvey's  exquisite  pic- 
ture, for  the  sake  of  such  of  my  readers  as  live  at  a  distance. 
The  locale  of  the  scene  represents  one  of  those  wild  upland 
solitudes  so  common  among  our  lower  mountain  ranges, — 
one  of  those  hollows  amid  the  hills  known  only  to  the 
shepherd  and  the  huntsman,  which  are  shut  out  by  the 
Burrounding  summits  from  the  view  of  the  neighboring 


CRITICISM  FOR  THE   bNINITIATED.  841 

country,  and  which,  rising  high  over  the  reign  of  corn,  and 
almost  over  that  of  wood,  presents  only  a  widespread  bar- 
renness. There  is  a  solitary  fir  bush  in  the  background^ 
which  at  a  lower  elevation  would  have  been  a  tree ;  and 
its  stunted  and  dwai-f-like  appearance  tells  of  the  ungenial 
climate  and  the  unproductive  soil.  All  else  up  to  the  very 
hill-tops  is  dark  with  heath ;  and  there  is  a  sky  well-nigh 
as  dark  beyond ;  for  there  is  scarce  transparency  enough 
in  the  accumulated  masses  of  heavy  clouds,  that  betoken  a 
night  of  tempest,  to  relieve  the  outline.  But  there  is  a 
light  in  the  foregi-ound.  The  previous  service  of  the  day 
has  been  protracted  for  many  hours  ;  there  has  been  a  long 
"  action  sermon  "  on  the  wrestlings  of  the  Kirk,  and  a  long, 
impressive  prayer ;  and  the  sun  at  his  setting  is  throwing 
his  last  red  gleam  on  the  group,  with  one  of  those  striking 
fire-light  effects  which  only  nature  and  genius  ever  succeed 
in  producing.  The  rays  reach  not  beyond,  but  are  absorbed 
in  the  heath ;  and  there  is  truth  in  this  too :  one  of  the 
most  striking  effects  of  the  moon  when  just  rising,  or  the 
sun  when  just  setting,  is,  that  the  light  seems  to  be  looking 
at  darkness,  and  the  darkness  abiding  the  look.  These, 
however,  are  but  the  minor  features  of  the  picture. 

The  congregation  is  but  a  small  one ;  the  fierce  persecu- 
tion has  been  long  protracted,  and  all  the  chaff  has  blown 
off.  The  battle  of  Bothwell  has  been  fought  and  lost: 
many  have  laid  down  their  lives  on  the  scaffold,  and  many 
on  the  hillside.  The  flower  of  the  country  is  wasting  in 
dungeons,  or  toiling  in  chains  in  the  colonic*.  There  is  no 
hope  of  deliverance  from  man ;  and  we  have  in  the  little 
group  before  us  a  mere  remnant,  tried  in  the  very  extrem- 
ity of  suffering,  and  found  faithful  and  true.  There  is  more 
than  a  Sabbath-day  sacredness  impressed  upon  the  scene; 
and  the  utter  poverty  in  which  the  solemn  feast  is  cele- 
brated adds  powerfully  to  the  effect.  A  cottage  bench, 
barely  large  enough  to  bear  the  ."communion  elements," 
serves  for  the  long,  low  table ;  but,  in  the  recollection  of 
other  days,  they  have  covered  it  with  a  white  linen  cloth. 
29* 


842  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC . 

The  flagon  is  evidently  not  of  silver,  nor  yet  the  plate 
which  bears  the  bread  ;  but  the  cups  are  :  they  have  been 
carefully  secreted  from  the  spoiler,  and  devoutly  reserved 
in  the  midst  of  extreme  want,  and  though  the  fines  of  Mid- 
dleton  and  Lauderdale  have  fallen  ruinously  heavy  on  the 
recusants,  for  the  service  of  the  sanctuary.  The  commu- 
nicants are  ranged  on  the  heath  on  both  sides.  Three  rev- 
erend elders  are  standing  in  front  of  the  table,  —  grave, 
strong-featured  men,  well  stricken  in  years,  with  high, 
thoughtful  foreheads,  and  in  both  form  and  countenance  so 
thoroughly  Scotch  that  the  spectator  is  convinced  at  a 
glance  they  could  belong  to  no  other  country  in  the  world 
except  our  own.  Had  I  met  them  in  the  north  of  Scotland, 
I  would  have  said  they  were  three  of  the  men,  and  that  I 
was  very  sure  they  could  all  speak  judiciously  to  the  ques- 
tion. There  is  an  air  of  reasoning  sagacity  about  them. 
Their  very  type  of  forehead  is  metaphysical,  high,  full, 
erect.  They  could  not  have  stopped  short  of  Calvinism, 
even  had  they  wished  it.  The  clergyman  stands  alone  on 
the  opposite  side,  with  his  back  to  the  setting  sun,  and  the 
pale  reflected  light  from  the  linen  cloth  thrown  upon  his 
face.  I  have  striven  to  read  the  expression.  The  spare 
figure  and  the  attenuated  hands  tell  at  once  their  story ; 
but  the  countenance  yields  its  full  meaning  more  slowly, 
and,  I  would  almost  say,  more  doubtfully.  But  it  has  evi- 
dently much  to  tell.  What  was  the  character  of  the  latter 
divines  of  the  covenant,  —  its  Camerons,  Pedens,  Renwicks, 
and  Cargills,  —  the  men  who  excommunicated  in  the  Tor- 
wood  that  "  man  of  blood,  Charles  Stuart,"  for  his  "  cruel 
slaughter  of  the  saints  of  God,"  —  the  men  who,  when  the 
persecution  waxed  hotter  and  hotter,  became  only  the 
more  determined  to  resist,  but  who,  though  the  will  re- 
mained unsubdued  and  unshaken,  experienced,  in  the  in- 
tensity of  their  distress,  something  approaching  to  aber- 
ration in  the  other  faculties,  and  in  their  more  unsettled 
moods  did  battle  in  lonely  caves  with  shades  of  darkness 
from  the  abyss,  or  saw  in  their  waking  visions  the  events 


CRITICrSM   FOR   THE  VXINITTArED.  843 

of  the  future  rising  up  thick  before  them.  Well  did  Solo- 
mon say  that  persecution  maketh  even  wise  men  mad.  The 
spectator  has  but  to  think  of  the  character  which  the  coun- 
tenance really  should  express,  and  he  will  find  it  no  easy 
matter  to  conceive  how  the  painter  could  have  expressed 
it  differently.  There  is  an  air  of  intense  melancholy  that 
tells  almost  of  a  weariness  of  life,  mingled  with  what,  for 
want  of  a  better  word,  I  must  term  a  ghostly  expression. 
There  is  the  appearance,  too,  of  fatigue  and  exhaustion, 
and  the  impression  of  a  strangely-mixed  feeling,  that  hov- 
ers, as  it  were,  between  the  visible  and  the  spiritual  world. 
The  whole  figure  and  countenance,  in  short,  gives  us  the 
idea  of  human  nature  tried  over-severely,  and  the  "  willing 
spirit"  failing  through  the  "weakness  of  the  flesh." 

On  the  spectator's  left  hand  there  is  a  group  of  the  com- 
municants thrown  much  into  the  shade.  There  are  two 
stern-looking  men  among  the  others,  who  have  evidently 
perused  with  great  satisfaction  the  chapter  in  the  "  Hind 
Let  Loose  "  "  Concerning  owning  tyrants'  authority,"  and 
the  other  equally  emphatic  chapter,  —  "  Defensive  arms 
vindicated."  The  one  rests  upon  his  broadsword  ;  and 
there  is  a  powder-horn  and  carabine  lying  beside  the  other. 
The  group  on  the  right  is  decidedly  the  most  exquisite  I 
ever  saw,  either  on  or  off  canvas.  It  is  instinct  with  char- 
acter, and  rich  in  beauty.  The  communicants  have  just 
partaken  of  the  bread ;  and  never  was  the  devotional  feeling 
—  the  awe  and  reverence  proper  to  the  occasion  — more 
truthfully  expressed.  One  of  the  men,  young  in  years  but 
old  in  sufferings,  still  retains  the  bread  in  his  hand.  His 
air  has  all  the  solemnity  of  prayer.  A  young  girl  sits  be- 
side him,  the  very  beau-ideal  of  a  beautiful  Scotch  female 
in  humble  life,  —  simple,  modest,  devout,  —  a  very  Jeanie 
Deans,  too,  in  quiet  good  sense,  only  a  great  deal  hand- 
somer than  Jeanie.  I  could  not  look  at  her  without  think- 
ing of  the  young  and  delicate  female,  her  contemporary 
and  countrywoman,  whom  the  cruel  dragoons  bottnd  to  a 
stake  below  flood-mark,  while  the  tide  was  rising,  and 


344  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

whom  they  urged,  as  the  water  rose  inch  by  inch,  to  abjure 
her  church  and  close  with  "  black  Prelacy,"  but  who,  faith- 
ful to  the  last,  chose  rather  to  perish  araid  the  waves  of 
the  sea.  There  is  a  still  younger  girl  beside  her,  who  has 
evidently  not  yet  been  admitted  into  full  communion  with 
the  church,  and  with  whose  deep  seriousness  there  mingles 
an  air  of  dejection.  An  old  woman,  on  the  extreme  edge 
of  life,  is  seated  in  the  middle  of  the  group ;  and  there  is 
perhaps  some  exaggeration  in  the  figure,  but  the  mind  and 
the  feeling  with  which  it  is  animated  triumphs  over  the 
defects.  It  is  not  the  thin,  sharp  features,  and  the  almost 
skeleton  arm,  that  attract  our  attention ;  it  is  the  all-per- 
vading intensity  of  the  devotional  feeling.  The  old  man 
who  sits  beside  her  with  his  face  covered  is  admirably  in 
keeping  with  the  rest.  Such  is  an  imperfect  description  of 
a  picture  which  must  not  only  be  seen,  but  also  carefully 
perused,  ere  its  excellence  can  be  adequately  appreciated. 
The  gentleman  who  criticized  it  in  our  last,  rates  it  consid- 
erably lower  than  I  have  done ;  and  there  are  other  pic- 
tures which  he  estimates  highly  that  lie  perhaps  beyond 
the  reach  of  my  sympathy.  I  am  unable  to  understand 
them.  I  therefore  again  remind  the  reader  that  I  pretend 
to  no  critical  skill,  and  that  my  only  criterion  of  merit  in 
a  picture  is  simply  the  amount  of  pleasure  which  I  derive 
from  it,  and  the  quantum  of  thought  which  I  find  embodied 
in  it.     I  have  literally  Xofeel  my  way  along  the  canvas. 

Allan's  picture  of  the  Bruce  reads  a  high  moral  lesson. 
What  is  the  moral  taught  by  Harvey's  Communion?  It  is 
a  controversial  picture  on  the  side  of  the  church.  It  sets 
before  us,  with  all  the  truth  of  impartial  history,  the  rebels 
and  outlaws  of  the  bloody  and  dissolute  reign  of  Charles  IL, 
and  teaches  powerfully,  the  useful  truth  that  these  offend- 
ers against  the  majesty  of  the  law  were  in  reality  the  pre- 
serving salt  of  the  age,  —  that  these  dwellers  in  dens  and 
caves  were  the  meet  representatives  for  the  time  of  the 
dwellers  in  dens  and  caves  described  by  the  apostle,  and 
of  whom  the  "  world  was  not  worthy."    The  dissolute  Mid- 


CRITICISM   FOR   THE   UNINITIATED.  345 

dleton,  the  crafty  Rothes,  the  brutal  Lauderdale,  the  bloody 
Mackenzie,  were  the  judges  and  law  authorities  of  the  time. 
A  gross  and  profligate  atheist,  bribed  against  his  own  peo- 
ple by  foreign  gold,  sat  upon  the  throne.  His  coxirt  was  a 
sty  of  licentiousness  and  impurity.  Wickedness  had  bro- 
ken loose  in  those  "evil  days;"  and  for  twenty-eight  years 
together  the  people  of  God  were  hunted  upon  the  hills. 
But  a  time  of  retribution  came;  the  wicked  died  "even  as 
the  beast  dieth,"  and  went  to  their  place  leaving  names 
behind  them  that  sound  like  curses  in  the  ears  of  posterity. 
The  reigning  flxmily  —  those  infatuated  and  low-thoughted 
Stuarts,  who,  in  their  short-sighted  and  debasing  policy, 
would  have  rendered  men  faithful  to  their  princes  by  mak- 
ing them  untrue  to  their  God  —  were  driven  from  their 
high  places  and  their  country  to  wander  homeless  under 
the  Curse  of  Cain,  — to  bring  disaster  on  every  nation  that 
sheltered  them,  and  death  and  ruin  on  every  adhei'ent  that 
espoused  their  cause.  And  at  length,  when  the  spectacle 
of  their  misery  and  degradation  was  fully  shown  to  the 
kingdoms  of  the  earth,  the  last  vial  of  wrath  was  poured 
upon  their  heads,  and  they  passed  into  utter  extinction. 
But  the  names  of  the  persecuted  survive  in  a  different 
savor ;  their  sufferings  have  met  with  a  different  reward ; 
the  noble  constancy  of  the  persecuted,  the  high  fortitude 
of  the  martyr,  still  live  ;  a  halo  encircles  their  sepulchres; 
and  from  many  a  solitary  grave  and  many  a  lonely  battle- 
field there  come  voices  like  those  which  issued  from  behind 
the  veil,  —  voices  that  tell  us  how  this  world,  with  all  its 
little  interests,  must  pass  away,  but  that  for  those  who 
fight  the  good  fight  there  abideth  a  rest  that  is  eternal.  I 
heartily  thank  this  man  of  genius  and  right  feeling  for  the 
lesson  which  his  pencil  has  taught.  Such  pictures  more 
than  please,  —  they  powerfully  instruct. 


846  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 


POtTETH     ARTICLE. 


At  the  further  end  of  the  first  exhibition-room,  on  the 
h?ft  hand,  there  is  a  moonlight  scene  by  M'Culloch,  — 
"Deer  Startled,"  —  which  only  a  man  of  genius  could  have 
transferred  from  nature  to  the  canvas.  It  is  actually  what 
it  professes  to  be,  —  a  landscape  lighted  up  by  the  moon  ; 
and  the  scene  itself,  a  deep  Highland  solitude,  is  full  of  a 
wild  and  yet  quiet  poetry. 

The  mind  of  every  man  has  its  picture-gallery,  — scenes 
of  beauty  or  magnificence,  or  of  quiet  comfort,  stamped 
indelibly  upon  his  memory.  More  than  half  the  exile's 
recollections  of  home  are  a  series  of  landscapes.  The  poor 
untaught  Highlander  carries  with  him  to  Canada  pictures 
enough  in  the  style  of  M'Culloch  to  store  an  exhibition- 
room, —  pictures  of  bi'own  solitary  moors,  with  here  and 
there  a  gray  cairn,  and  here  and  there  a  sepulchral  stone,  — 
pictures,  too,  of  narrow,  secluded  glens,  each  with  its  own 
mossy  stream  that  sparkles  to  the  light  like  amber,  and  its 
shaggy  double  strip  of  hazel  and  birch,  —  of  hills,  too,  that 
close  around  the  valleys,  and  vary  their  tints,  as  they  re- 
tire, from  brown  to  purple,  and  from  purple  to  blue.  He 
carries  them  all  with  him  to  the  distant  country.  The 
gloomy  forest  rises  thick  as  a  hedge  on  every  side  of  his 
wooden  luit;  the  huge  stuinps  stand  up  abrupt  and  black 
from  amid  his  corn,  in  the  little  angular  patch  which  his 
labor  has  laid  open  to  the  air  and  the  sunshine.  These 
are  the  objects  which  strike  the  sense  ;  but  the  others  fill 
the  mind ;  and  when  year  after  year  has  gone  by,  and  he 
sits  among  his  children's  children  a  wornout  old  man,  full 
of  narratives  about  the  brown  moors  and  the  running 
streams  of  his  own  Scotland,  his  eyes  moisten  as  the  scenes 
rise  up  before  him  in  more  than  their  original  freshness ; 
and  he  tells  the  little  folk,  as  they  press  around  him,  that 
there  is  no  place  in  the  world  that  can  be  at  all  compared 
with  the  Highlands,  and  that  no  plant  equals  the  heather. 


CRITICISM   FOR  THE   UNINITIATED.  347 

One  of  Wordsworth's  earliest  lyrics,  a  sweet  little  poem 
which  he  gave  to  the  world  at  a  time  when  the  world 
tliought  very  little  of  it,  though  it  has  become  wiser  since, 
embodies  a  similar  thought.  The  poet  represents  a  poor 
girl — originally  from  a  rural  district,  who  had  been  both 
happier  and  better  ere  she  had  come  to  foi'm  a  unit  in 
the  million  of  London — passing  in  the  morning  along 
Gheapside,  when  a  bird,  caged  against  the  sunny  wall, 
breaks  out  in  a  sudden  burst  of  song.  Her  old  recollec- 
tions are  awakened  at  the  sound ;  the  street  disappears, 
and  the  dingy  houses ;  she  sees  the  meadow  tract,  with 
the  overhanging  trees,  where  she  used  to  milk  her  cows; 
she  sees,  too,  the  cattle  themselves  waiting  her  coming; 
and,  in  the  words  of  the  lyric,  "a  river  flows  down  through 
the  breadth  of  Gheapside."  Poor  Susan !  "  Her  heart  is 
stirred,"  and  her  eyes  fill. 

Every  human  mind  has  its  pictures.  Were  it  otherwise, 
who  would  care  anything  for  the  art  of  the  painter? 
When  standing  in  front  of  M'Gulloch's  exquisite  landscape, 
I  was  enabled  to  call  up  some  of  my  own,  —  moonlight 
scenes  of  quiet  and  soothing  beauty,  or  of  wild  and  lonely 
grandeur.  I  stood  on  a  solitary  seashore.  A  broken 
wall  of  cliffs,  more  than  a  hundred  yards  in  height,  rose 
abruptly  behind,  —  here  advancing  in  huge  craggy  tow- 
ers, tapestried  with  ivy  and  crowned  with  wood,  there  re- 
ceding into  deep,  gloomy  hollows.  The  sea,  calm  and 
dark,  stretched  away  league  after  league  in  front  to  the 
far  horizon.  The  moon  had  just  risen,  and  threw  its  long 
fiery  gleam  of  red  light  across  the  waters  to  the  shore.  A 
solitary  vessel  lay  far  away,  becalmed  in  its  wake.  I  could 
see  the  sail  flapping  idly  against  the  mast,  as  she  slowly 
rose  and  sank  to  the  swell.  The  light  gradually  strength- 
ened; the  dark  bars  of  cloud,  that  had  shown  like  the 
grate  of  a  dungeon,  wore  slowly  away;  the  white  sea 
birds,  perched  on  the  shelves,  became  visible  along  the 
clifls ;  the  advancing  crags  stood  out  from  the  darkness ; 
the  recesses  within  seemed,  from  the  force  of  contrast,  to 


348  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

deepen  their  shades ;  the  isolated  spire-like  crags  that  rise 
thick  along  the  coast,  half  on  the  shore,  half  in  the  sea, 
flung  each  its  line  of  darkness  inwards  along  the  beach, 
A  wide  cavern  yawned  behind  me,  rugged  with  spiracles 
of  stalactites,  that  hung  bristling  from  the  rocf  like  icicles 
at  the  edge  of  a  waterfall;  and  a  long  rule  of  light  that 
penetrated  to  the  innermost  wall,  leaving  the  sides  en- 
veloped in  thick  obscurity,  fell  full  on  what  seemed  an 
ancient  tomb  and  a  reclining  figure  in  white,  —  sports  of 
nature  in  this  lonely  cave.  There  was  an  awful  grandeur 
in  the  scene:  the  deep  solitude,  the  calm  still  night,  the 
huge  cliffs,  the  vast  sea,  the  sublime  heavens,  the  slowly 
rising  moon,  with  its  broad,  cold  face !  I  felt  a  half-super- 
stitious feeling  creep  over  me,  mingled  with  a  too  oppress- 
ive sense  of  the  weakness  and  littleness  of  man.  Pride 
is  not  one  of  the  vices  of  solitude.  It  grows  upon  us 
among  our  fellows ;  but  alone,  and  at  midnight,  amid  the 
sublime  of  nature,  we  must  feel,  if  we  feel  at  all,  that  we 
ourselves  are  little,  and  that  God  only  is  great. 

The  scene  passed,  and  there  straightway  arose  another. 
I  stood  high  in  an  open  space,  on  a  thickly-wooded  ter- 
race, that  stretched  into  an  undulating  plain,  bounded 
with  hills.  The  moon  at  full  looked  down  from  the  mid- 
dle heavens,  undimmed  by  a  single  cloud ;  but  far  to  the 
west  there  was  a  gathering  wreath  of  vapor,  and  a  lunar 
rainbow  stretched  its  arch  in  pale  beauty  across  a  secluded 
Highland  valley.  A  wide  river  rolled  at  the  foot  of  the 
wooded  terrace ;  but  a  low  silvery  fog  had  risen  over  it, 
bounded  on  both  sides  by  the  line  of  water  and  bank ;  and 
I  could  see  it  stretching  its  huge  snake-like  length  adown 
the  hollow,  winding  with  the  stream,  and  diminishing  in 
the  distance.  The  ftosts  of  autumn  had  dyed  the  foliage 
of  the  wood  ;  the  trees  rose  around  me  in  their  winding- 
sheets  of  brown  and  crimson  and  yellow,  or  stretched,  in 
the  more  exposed  openings,  their  naked  arms  to  the  sky. 
There  was  a  dark  moor  beyond  the  fog-covered  river,  that 
seemed  to  absorb  the  light ;  but  directly  under  the  nearest 


CRITICISM  FOR  THE  UNINITIATED.  349 

hill,  which  rose  like  a  pyramid,  there  was  a  tall  solitary 
ruin  standing  out  from  the  darkness,  like  the  sheeted 
spectre  of  a  giant.  The  distant  glens  glimmered  indistinct 
to  the  eye ;  but  the  first  snows  of  the  season  had  tipped 
the  upper  eminences  with  white,  and  they  stood  out  in 
bold  and  prominent  relief,  nearer,  apparently,  than  even 
the  middle  ground  of  the  landscape.  The  whole  was 
exquisitely  bea^itiful,  —  a  scene  to  be  once  seen  and  ever 
remembered. 

I  must  attempt  a  description  of  the  picture  of  M'Cuiloch. 
The  moon  is  riding  high  over  head  in  a  cloudy  and  yet  a 
quiet  sky.  There  is  a  greenish  transparency  in  the  piled 
and  rounded  masses.  Even  where  most  dense,  the  thinner 
edges  are  light  and  fleecy ;  and  the  whole  betokens  what 
White  of  Selborne  would  have  termed  a  mild  and  delicate 
evening.  There  is  a  lonely  moor  in  front,  a  piece  of  water, 
and  a  stunted  fir  tree.  The  light  falls  strongly  both  upon 
the  water  and  v/here  the  heathy  bank  shelves  gradually 
toward  it  on  the  right,  while  the  middle  ground  of  the 
picture,  with  its  scattered  trees,  lies  more  in  the  shade. 
The  clouded  sky  tells  us,  however,  that  the  whole  country 
on  such  an  evening  cannot  be  other  than  checkered  with 
a  carpeting  of  alternate  light  and  shadow.  There  is  a 
screen  of  hills  behind,  dim  and  yet  distinct ;  and  a  few 
startled  deer  —  startled  we  know  not  why  —  are  grouped 
in  front.  Such  are  the  main  features  of  the  picture  ;  but 
it  is  one  thing  merely  to  tell  these  over  as  in  a  catalogue, 
and  quite  another  to  convey  an  adequate  idea  of  the  wild 
and  yet  simple  poetry  which  they  express.  The  extreme 
loneliness  of  the  scene,  the  calm  beauty  of  the  evening, 
the  unknown  cause  of  fright  among  these  untamed  deni- 
zens of  the  moors  and  mountains,  —  what  can  they  have 
seen  ?  what  can  they  have  heard  ?  It  is  night,  and  deep 
solitude.     Are  the  spirits  of  the  dead  abroad  ? 

M'Cuiloch  has  another  very  sweet  picture  in  the  exhibi- 
tion of  this  year,  —  "A Highland  Solitude  with  Druidical 
Stones."  We  find  it  in  the  large  middle  room,  on  the  left 
30 


850  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

hand  as  we  pass  inwards.  It  is,  though  eqnally  Highland, 
an  entirely  different  scene  from  the  other ;  and  yet,  in  de- 
scribing it,  — for  the  pen  has  no  such  variety  of  shades  aa 
the  pencil,  and  no  such  pliant  flexibility  of  outline, — I 
must  employ  some  of  the  same  words.  I  must  repeat,  for 
instance,  that  there  is  a  heathy  moor  in  the  foreground, 
and  a  screen  of  hills  behind,  and  that  a  sky  checkered 
with  cloudo  has  dappled  the  landscape  with  sunshine  and 
shadow.  There  is  a  transient  shower  sweeping  gloomily 
along  a  naiTow  glen,  while  the  hills  to  the  right  are  smil- 
ing in  purple  to  the  sun.  The  Druidical  stones  rise  gi'ay 
in  the  mid-ground ;  and  the  smoke,  apparently  of  a  shep- 
herd's fire,  is  ascending  slantways  from  among  them,  be- 
fore a  light  breeze.  It  is,  as  I  have  said,  a  sweet  picture, 
but  inferior  in  feeling  to  the  other,  and  perhaps  not  alto- 
gether what  its  name  would  have  led  us  to  expect.  I 
question,  however,  whether  that  blended  feeling  of  the 
sublime  and  the  solemn,  with  which  it  is  natural  to  con- 
template the  monuments  of  an  antiquity  so  remote  that 
they  lie  wholly  beyond  the  reach  of  history,  and  which 
form  the  sole  and  yet  most  doubtful  memorials  of  unknown 
rites  and  usages,  and  of  tribes  long  passed  away,  can  be 
reawakened  by  the  imitations  of  the  painter.  I  have  felt 
it  strongly  on  the  scene  of  some  forgotten  battle  sprinkled 
with  cairns  and  tumuli,  and  where  the  stone-axe  and  the 
flint-arrow  are  occasionally  turned  up  to  the  light,  to  tes- 
tify of  a  period  when  the  aborigines  of  the  country  were 
making  their  first  rude  essays  in  art,  and  when  the  man 
bad  not  yet  risen  over  the  savage.  I  have  felt  it  when, 
standing  where  some  ancient  burial  mound  had  been  just 
laid  open,  I  saw  the  rude  unglazed  sepulchral  urn  filled 
with  half-burned  fragments  of  bone,  or  with  rudely-formed 
ornaments  of  jet  or  aml^r,  fashioned  evidently  ere  the 
discovery  of  iron.  I  have  felt  it,  too,  amid  the  Druidical 
circle,  and  beside  the  tall  unshapen  obelisk.  But  I  did 
not  feel  it  when  standing  before  M'Culloch's  second  pic- 
ture ;  an.l  I  questioned  whether  in  what  he  bad  failed  any 


CRirrCISM   FOR  THE   mflNITIATED.  351 

Other  could  have  succeeded.  With  what  Johnson  terms 
the  "  honest  desire  of  giving  pleasure,"  I  shall  briefly  at- 
tempt a  description  of  the  scene  in  which  I  have  felt  it 
most  strongly,  a  scene  to  be  visited  in  the  gray  of  the 
evening,  or  by  the  light  of  the  moon. 

There  is  a  soft  pastoral  valley,  formed  by  the  river  Nairn, 
not  much  more  than  a  mile  to  the  soutliwest  of  the  field 
of  Culloden.  Low-swelling  eminences  rise  on  either  hand. 
The  view  is  terminated,  as  we  look  downward,  by  a  prom- 
inent rounded  hill,  on  which  are  the  remains  of  one  of 
those  ancient  earthen  forts  or  duns  —  combinations  of 
green  mounds  and  deep  angular  fosses  —  which  seem  to 
have  constituted  in  our  own  country,  like  the  hill-forts  of 
Kew  Zealand  in  the  present  day,  the  very  first  efforts  of 
ingenuity  in  defensive  warfare,  —  the  very  first  inventions 
of  the  weaker  party  in  their  attempts  to  withstand  the 
stronger.  As  we  look  up  the  glen  towards  the  west,  we 
see  the  view  shut  in  by  another  rounded  hill,  and  it  also 
bears  its  ancient  stronghold,  —  one  of  those  puzzles  of  the 
antiquary,  —  a  vitrified  fort.  The  low  rude  wall  all  around 
the  top  of  the  eminence  has  been  fixed  into  one  solid  mass 
by  the  force  of  fire  ;  and  we  marvel  how  the  rude  savage 
who  applied  the  consolidating  agent,  all  unacquainted  as 
he  was  with  mortar,  and  unfurnished  with  tools,  should 
have  been  so  expert  a  chemist.  He  was  a  glassmaker  on 
a  large  scale,  probably  before  the  discovery  of  the  Phceni- 
cian  merchants.  It  is  in  the  valley  below,  however,  on  a 
level  meadow-plain  beside  the  winding  Nairn,  known  as 
the  plain  of  Clava,  that  we  find  most  to  interest  and  to 
astonish.  It  is  a  city  of  the  ancient  dead,  thickly  mottled 
in  its  whole  extent  with  sepulchral  cairns,  standing  stones, 
and  Druidical  temples.  Detached  columns  of  undressed 
stone,  shaggy  with  moss  and  spotted  with  lichens,  rise  at 
wide  intervals  apparently  in  lines,  as  if  to  unite  the  other 
structures  in  one  general  design.  There  are  cairns  beside 
cairns,  and  circles  within  circles ;  and  there  rose  high  over 
the  rest  only  a  few  years  ago,  but  they  have  since  been 


852  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

injured  by  some  curious  excavator,  tliree  accumulations  of 
stone,  immensely  more  huge  than  the  others,  and  more 
artificially  constructed,  that  seemed  to  mark  out  the  rest- 
ing-place of  the  kings  or  chieftains  of  the  tribe.  The  bases 
of  these  larger  cairns  were  hemmed  in  by  circular  rings 
of  upright  stones  ;  and  a  wider  ring,  of  larger  masses,  en- 
circled the  outside.  A  dark,  low-roofed,  circular  chamber 
occupied  the  space  within.  Its  walls  were  constructed  of 
upright  stones  ;  and  uncemeuted  flags,  overlapping  each 
other  until  they  closed  atop,  formed  the  rude,  dome-like 
roof.  In  the  fat,  unctuous  earth  which  composed  the  floor 
there  were  found  unglazed  earthen  urns,  as  rudely  fashioned 
as  the  surrounding  building,  and  filled  with  ashes  and 
half-calcined  bones.  It  is  a  curious  fact,  that,  even  so  late 
as  the  close  of  the  last  century,  Highlanders  in  the  neigh- 
borhood buried  amid  these  ancient  tombs  such  of  their 
children  as  died  before  baptism.  For,  according  to  a  su- 
perstition derived  from  the  Church  of  Rome,  and  in  some 
remote  localities  not  yet  worn  out,  unbaptized  children 
were  deemed  unholy  ;  and  in  this  belief  their  remains 
were  consigned  to  the  same  unconsecrated  ground  which 
contained  the  dust  of  their  remote  pagan  ancestors.  It 
is  another  striking  fact,  —  a  fact  full  of  poetry,  —  that 
near  the  western  end  of  the  plain  of  Clava  there  are  the 
remains  of  an  ancient  Christian  chapel,  which  still  bears 
the  name  of  the  clachan,  or  church  ;  and  a  traditional  be- 
lief survives  in  the  district  that  it  was  planted  in  this  cit- 
adel of  idolatry  by  the  first  Christian  missionaries.  Would 
that  we  were  acquainted  with  its  story  I  and  yet  it  would 
probably  be  merely  another  illustration  of  the  fact  that 
the  religion  that  most  inculcates  humility  and  self-denial 
is  of  all  animating  principles  the  most  daring  and  heroic. 


CRITICISM   FOR  THE   UNINITIATED.  85B 


FIFTH   AETICLE. 

What  sort  of  painters,  think  you,  do  the  Scotch  promise 
to  become?  Why,  painters  equal  to  any  the  world  ever 
produced,  if  the  national  mind  be  only  suffered  to  get 
into  a  national  track,  and  our  artists  have  sense  and  spirit 
enough,  however  much  they  may  admire  the  pictures  of 
other  countries,  not  to  imitate  them.  The  genius  of  our 
countrymen,  as  shown  in  their  literature,  is  eminently  of 
a  pictorial  character.  The  national  feeling  is  vividly  de- 
scriptive. As  early  even  as  the  days  of  James  IV.,  old 
Gavin  Douglas,  and  his  contemporary  Will  Dunbar,  could 
fill  page  after  page  with  splendid  descriptions,  as  minutely 
faithful  as  the  descriptions  of  Cowper  in  his  "  Task,"  and 
scarcely  less  poetical.  The  "  Seasons  "  of  Thomson  form 
a  series  of  landscapes ;  and  never,  sui-ely,  were  there  land- 
scapes more  felicitously  conceived  or  more  exquisitely 
finished.  It  has  become  the  fashion  of  late  to  decry 
M'Pherson  ;  but  rarely  has  Europe  seen  a  mightier  master 
of  description.  The  scenery  of  Burns  is  nature  itself. 
Who  ever  excelled  Grahame  in  pictures  of  quiet  beauty, 
or  Professor  Wilson  in  the  wild  and  the  sublime  of  Alpine 
landscape  ?  And,  last  and  greatest,  we  stake  Sir  Walter 
Scott  for  the  vividly  graphic,  for  strength  of  outline  and 
beauty  of  color,  against  every  painter  of  every  school,  and 
all  the  writers  of  the  world.  The  people  whose  litera- 
ture exhibits  such  powers  have,  if  they  v/ish  to  become 
painters,  only  to  try.  But  let  them  beware  of  imitation. 
The  straight-nosed  beauties  of  Greece  were  no  doubt  very 
great  beauties,  and  its  historical  characters  very  fine  char- 
acters indeed.  There  is  something  very  admirable,  too,  in 
the  genius  of  Italy.  No  people  ever  excelled  the  Italians 
in  drawing  legendary  saints,  with  glories  of  yellow  ochre 
round  their  heads,  or  angels  mounted  on  the  wings  of 
pigeons.  But  what  of  all  that  ?  It  is  not  by  painting  the 
Btraight-nosed  beauties  of  Greece  or  the  winged  angels  of 
31*       • 


354  LTTERARY   AND   SCIENTrFIC. 

Italy  that  the  Scotch  artist  need  expect  to  confer  honor 
on  either  Scotland  or  himself.  Let  him  do  what  was  done 
by  Thomson  and  Bm'ns  and  Sir  Walter  Scott,  and  what 
Wilkie  and  Allan  and  Harvey  are  employed  in  doing,  — 
let  him  walk  abroad  into  nature,  and  study  the  history  of 
his  country.  The  mere  imitative  faculty  is  one  of  the 
lowest ;  the  Chinese  possess  it  in  perfection,  and  so  does 
the  chimpanzee. 

But  am  I  not  evincing  a  barbarous  and  Gothic  disregard 
of  the  chissical  ?  Very  far  from  it.  I  have  read  all  Cow- 
per's  "  Homer"  and  Dryden's  "Virgil"  again  and  again, 
I  could  almost  repeat  that  portion  of  the  Odyssey  in  which 
the  wanderer  of  Ithaca  is  desci'ibed  sitting  apart  in  his 
own  hall,  a  poor,  despised  beggar,  when  his  enemies  are 
expending  their  strength  in  vain  attempts  to  bend  his  bow ; 
and  I  have  felt  ray  heart  leap  within  me,  when,  scorning 
reply  to  their  rude  taunts,  he  leaned  easily  forward  on 
the  well-remembered  weapon,  and,  bending  it  with  scarce 
more  of  effort  than  the  musician  employs  in  straightening 
the  strings  of  his  harp,  sent  the  well-aimed  arrow  through 
all  the  rings  and  the  double  planks  of  the  oaken  gate  be- 
yond. I  have  luxuriated,  too,  over  the  exquisite  descrip- 
tions of  the  ^neid,  —  amid  the  horrors  of  the  burning 
town,  for  instance,  till  I  almost  saw  the  pointed  flames 
shooting  far  aloft  into  the  darkness,  and  almost  heard  the 
tramplings  and  shouts  of  the  enemy  in  the  streets,  —  amid 
the  terrors,  too,  of  the  tempest,  when  the  fierce  surge  rolled 
resistless  over  the  foundering  vessel,  and  the  scattered 
fleet  labored  heavily  amid  the  loud  dash  of  the  billows 
and  the  wild  howl  of  the  wind.  And  when  I  looked  for 
tlie  first  time  on  Laocoon  and  his  children  crushed  in  the 
ruthless  coil  of  the  serpent,  —  a  too  faithful  allegory  of 
the  human  race,  —  the  story  of  Virgil  rose  at  once  before 
me,  and  I  felt  the  blended  genius  of  the  poet  and  the 
Rcalptor  breathing  in  an  intense  human  intei-est  from  the 
group.  But  what  classical  artists  and  authors  were  born 
to  accomplish  has  been  accomplished  already ;  and  no  man 


CRITICISM  FOR  THE  UNINITIATED.  855 

ever  became  great,  nor  ever  will,  by  servilely  following  in 
their  track.  The  more  an  author  or  artist  copies  them, 
the  less  is  he  like  them ;  for  the  imitative  turn,  which  de- 
lights in  catching  their  manner,  is  altogether  incompatible 
with  the  originality  of  their  genius.  And  hence  it  is  that 
our  modern  classics,  whether  painters  or  sculptors,  or  man- 
ufacturers of  unreadable  epics,  rank  invariably  among  the 
men  of  neglected  merit.  They  overshoot  those  sympathies 
of  a  common  humanity  to  which  their  masters  could  so 
powerfully  appeal  in  the  past,  and  which  their  contempo- 
raries are  scarcely  less  successful  in  awakening  in  the  pres- 
ent, each  in  a  ti'ack  of  his  own  opening.  The  sculptors 
of  Great  Britain  were  classical  and  imitative  for  a  whole 
century  ;  and  all  they  produced  in  that  time,  in  conse- 
quence, was  a  lumbering  mass  of  unreadable  allegories 
in  stone,  which  no  one  cares  for  ;  groups  of  Prudences 
with  fine  necks;  of  Mercies,  too,  with  well-turned  ankles  ; 
and  of  Cupids  looking  sly ;  and,  had  they  been  employed 
in  cutting  them  in  white-sugar  or  gingerbread,  all  would 
have  now  agreed  that  the  choice  of  the  material  mightily 
heightened  the  value  of  the  work. 

Among  the  rising  painters  of  our  country,  I  know  no 
artist  whose  productions  better  serve  to  corroborate  the 
truth  of  remarks  such  as  these  than  the  pictures  of  Thomas 
Duncan.  Brown  justly  reckons  the  principle  of  contrast,  or 
contrariety,  among  the  causes  which  suggest  and  connect 
ideas.  One  of  Duncan's  living  pictures  —  "  Prince  Charles 
and  the  Highlanders  entering  Edinburgh  after  the  battle 
of  Preston,"  a  picture  exquisitely  Scotch,  instinct  with 
character  and  rich  in  interest  —  shows  more  powerfully, 
on  this  principle,  the  folly  of  toiling  in  the  dead  school  of 
classical  imitation,  than  even  the  effete  of  the  artists  who 
irrecoverably  lose  themselves  within  its  precincts  of  death. 
I  spent  two  full  hours  before  his  picture,  and  regretted  I 
could  not  spend  four. 

The  morning  sun  has  risen  high  over  the  Old  Town  of 
Edinburgh,  and  the  beams  fall  clear  and  bright  through  a 


856  LITERARY  AND   SCIEISTTIFIC. 

cloudless  autumn  sky,  on  half  the  high-piled,  picturesque 
tenements  of  the  Canongate,  and  half  the  street  below. 
The  other  half  lies  gray  in  the  shade.  I  saw,  just  in  front, 
on  the  sunny  side,  the  castellated  jail  of  the  burgh,  with 
its  blackened  turrets  and  its  Flemish-looking  clock-house. 
The  barred  windows  are  thronged  with  faces ;  and  a  few 
disarmed,  half-stripped,  forlorn-looking  soldiers,  huddled 
together  on  an  outer  staircase,  show  that  the  incarcerated 
crowd  are  military  prisoners  from  the  field  of  Preston. 
The  street  lies  in  long  perspective  beyond,  house  rising 
over  house,  and  balcony  projecting  beyond  balcony.  Every 
flaw  and  weather-stain  has  the  mark  of  truth  ;  every  pe- 
culiarity of  the  architecture  reminded  me  of  the  scene  and 
the  age.  A  dense  crowd  occupies  the  foreground.  The 
Highlanders,  after  totally  routing  the  superior  numbers  of 
Cope,  have  entered  the  city  with  their  Prince  at  their  head, 
and  have  advanced  thus  far  on  their  march  to  Holyrood 
House.  The  apparently  living  mass  seems  bearing  down  ' 
upon  the  spectator.  There  is  a  mischievous-looking,  ragged 
urchin,  half-extinguished  by  the  cap  of  some  luckless  gren- 
adier, who  has  possibly  no  further  use  for  it,  scampering 
out  of  the  way ;  and  an  unfortunate  barber,  the  very  type 
of  Smollett's  Strap,  has  got  himself  fast  jambed  between 
a  projecting  outside  stair  and  the  brandished  war-axe  of  a 
half-naked  and  more  than  half-savage  gillie,  who  is  exert- 
ing himself  with  tremendous  vigor  in  clearing  a  passage, 
and  who,  as  if  to  add  to  the  poor  barber's  distress  and 
peril,  is  looking  in  another  direction.  There  are  other 
strokes  of  the  comic  in  the  piece.  In  one  corner  a  Jaco- 
bite laird,  blirC  fou^  is  threatening  destruction  with  un- 
sheathed whinyard  to  all  and  sundry  who  will  not  drink 
the  Prince's  health.  In  another,  two  pipers  are  marching 
side  by  side.  The  one,  a  long-winded  young  fellow,  cast 
in  the  Herculean  mould  of  his  country,  and  proud  of  his 
strength  and  his  music,  is  adjusting  the  drone  of  his  pipe 
with  a  degree  of  self-complacency  that  might  serve  even 
the  Dean  of  Faculty  himself.    The  other,  an  old  man  of 


CRITICISM   FOR  THE  TJNnTITIATED.  357 

at  least  seventy-five,  with  features  fiercely  Celtic,  and  an 
expression  like  a  thunder-cloud,  is  evidently  enraged  at 
the  better  breath  of  his  opponent ;  but,  collecting  his 
strength  for  another  effort,  he  seems  determined  rather 
to  die  than  give  in.  The  Prince  rides  in  the  centre  on  a 
noble  steed,  that  seems  starting  out  of  the  canvas.  We 
recognize  him  at  once,  not  only  from  his  prominent  place 
and  princely  bearing,  but  from  the  striking  truth  of  the 
portrait,  —  one  of  the  most  spirited,  perhaps,  that  has  yet 
appeared,  and  most  lite  the  man  when  at  his  best.  Has 
the  reader  never  noticed  the  striking  resemblance  which 
the  better  portraits  of  Prince  Charles  bear  to  those  of  his 
remote  ancestress.  Queen  Mary  ?  I  was  first  struck  by  it 
when,  in  glancing  my  eye  over  a  bookseller's  window,  I 
saw  side  by  side  the  frontispieces  of  "  Chambers'  History 
of  the  Rebellion  "  and  the  "  Life  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots," 
—  both  numbers  of  "  Constable's  Miscellany  ;  "  and  I 
have  had  since  repeated  opportunities  of  verifying  the 
remark.  It  is,  I  believe,  no  uncommon  matter  for  resem- 
blances of  this  kind  to  reappear  in  families  at  distant  in- 
tervals. Sir  Walter,  no  ordinary  observer  of  whatever 
pertained  to  the  nature  of  man,  whether  physical  or  intel- 
lectual, has  repeatedly  embodied  the  fact  in  his  inventions  ; 
but  I  do  not  know  a  more  striking  instance  of  it  in  real 
history  than  the  one  adduced. 

All  the  more  celebrated  heroes  of  the  rebellion  are 
grouped  round  the  Prince,  full,  evidently,  of  a  generous 
enthusiasm,  in  which  the  spectator  can  hardly  avoid  sym- 
pathizing, Thei'e  was  little  of  moral  worth  or  of  true 
kingly  dignity  in  the  latter  Stuarts ;  and  I  could  not  for- 
get that  the  "gallant  adventurer,"  who,  with  at  least  all 
the  courage  of  his  ancestors,  threw  himself  upon  the  gen- 
erosity of  the  devoted  and  warm-hearted  Highlanders,  was 
in  reality  a  cold,  selfish  man,  who  sunk  in  after  life  into 
a  domestic  tyrant  and  a  besotted  debauchee.  And  yet  I 
could  not  avoid  sharing  in  the  well-expressed  excitement 
of  the  Prince's  gallant  adherents,  as  they   drink   in   his 


dSS  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

looks  with  all  the  intense  and  rapturous  exultation  of  a 
loyalty  which  has  passed  from  the  earth  with  the  genera- 
tion that  cherished  it.  No  such  pervading  love  or  deep 
devotion  awaits  the  kings  or  princes  of  the  present  time. 
Behind  the  Prince  rides  Clanranald,  the  chief  of  Clan- 
Colla.  His  Highlanders  take  precedence  of  the  other 
clans,  for  the  Bruce  had  assigned  them  their  place  of 
honor  in  the  right  when  they  fought  at  Bannockburn. 
Young  Clanranald,  a  tall,  handsome  youth,  and  his  cousin 
Kinloch  Moidart,  have  advanced  in  front ;  old  Hugh 
Stewart,  a  rugged,  deep-chested  veteran  of  the  Black 
Watch,  who  fought  in  all  the  battles  of  Charles,  and  whose 
portrait  is  still  preserved,  presses  on  behind  them ;  and 
the  gigantic  miller  of  Inverrahayle's  Mill,  a  tremendous 
specimen  of  the  wild  mountaineer,  is  still  more  conspic- 
uous among  a  group  of  clansmen  on  the  left.  There  is 
a  dense  crowd  behind,  and  what  seems  a  thick  wood  of 
spears  and  axes,  with  here  and  there  a  banner,  —  among 
the  rest,  an  English  standard  taken  from  the  dragoons  at 
Preston.  A  heap  of  other  trophies  lies  in  front,  over  which 
Hamish  M'Gregor,  the  son  of  the  celebrated  outlaw  Rob 
Roy,  keeps  watch. 

An  intensely  interesting  group  occupies  the  left.  There 
we  see  Lord  George  Murray,  the  cool-headed,  far-seeing 
statesman  of  the  expedition,  who  dared  honestly  to  tell 
his  Prince  disagreeable  truths,  and  who  was  liked  none 
the  better  because  he  did  so;  the  gallant  Lochiel,  too, 
who  in  his  devoted  loyalty  joined  in  the  enterprise  with 
his  brave  Camerons,  even  though  he  had  anticipated  from 
the  first  that  the  result  would  be  disastrous.  There  also 
is  the  Marquis  of  Tullibarden,  the  original  of  Sir  Walter's 
Baron  of  Bradwardine,  a  fine  old  Lowland  cavalier,  dressed, 
in  honor  of  the  Prince,  in  a  birthday  suit,  half-covered 
with  lace,  and  of  a  fashion  at  least  twenty  years  earlier 
than  the  time.  There  is  a  galaxy  of  high-born  dames 
beside  him,  relatives  of  the  family,  —  one  of  them  at  least 
of  exquisite  beauty,  and  all  of  them  what  clever  artists  do 


CRITICISM  FOR  THE  UNINITIATED.  359 

not  invariably  succeed  in  painting,  even  when  they  try 
most  —  ladies.  Their  countenances  seem  lighted  up  with 
the  triumph  of  the  occasion ;  and  the  children  of  the 
family,  sweet  little  things,  worth  all  the  cupids  that  the 
imitators  ever  chiselled  or  painted,  are  employed  in  strew- 
ing white  roses  in  the  path  of  the  Prince.  The  opposite 
side  of  the  picture  is  occupied  by  a  group  of  a  different 
but  not  less  interesting  character. 

On  an  outer  stone  stair,  on  the  shady  side  of  the  street, 
—  one  of  those  appendages  characteristic  of  the  Scoto- 
Flemish  style  of  domestic  architecture, — there  is  a  group 
of  citizens.  Professor  Maclaurin,  the  celebrated  mathe- 
matician, the  man  who  first  brought  down  the  philosophy 
of  Newton  to  the  level  of  common  minds,  and  whose  sim- 
ple, unpretending  style  rises  in  some  passages  to  the  dig- 
nity of  the  sublime,  purely  fi'om  the  force  and  magnitude 
of  his  thoughts,  leans  calmly  over  the  rail.  The  good 
zealous  Whig  had  proposed  to  the  magistrates  his  well* 
laid  scheme  for  fortifying  and  defending  the  city,  and  had 
exerted  himself  in  carrying  it  into  effect;  but  the  neces- 
sary courage  to  carry  out  his  measures  was  lacking  on  the 
part  of  the  people,  and  so  he  has  had  just  to  fall  back  and 
rest  him  on  his  philosophy.  John  Home,  the  author  of 
'<  Douglas,"  and  one  of  the  first  historians  of  the  Rebellion, 
stands  beside  him.  He,  too,  though  a  mere  youth  at  the 
time,  had  bestirred  himself  vigorously  in  the  same  cause, 
and  is  now  evidently  bearing  the  reverse  of  his  party  as 
he  best  can.  But  the  figure  behind  them,  one  of  the  most 
masterly  in  the  picture,  is  instinct  with  a  sterner  spirit. 
Had  there  been  five  hundred  such  men  in  the  city  to  back 
the  philosopher,  the  Highlanders,  with  all  their  valor, 
would  have  been  kept  outside  the  wall.  He  stands  at  the 
stair-head,  scowling  at  the  enemy  and  all  their  array  of 
spears  and  battleaxes,  —  one  of  the  followers  of  Richard 
Cameron,  girt  with  a  buff  belt,  from  which  his  Andrea 
Ferrara  hangs  suspended,  and  bearing  a  heavy  Bible.  De- 
pend on  it,  had  that  man  fought  at  Preston,  he  would 


360  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

have  stood  beside  the  good  and  gallant  Colonel  Gardiner 
unmoved  in  the  midst  of  rout  and  panic,  and  have  left, 
like  him,  a  gashed  and  mangled  corpse  to  mark  where 
the  tide  of  the  battle  had  turned.  Such  is  a  meagre  out- 
line of  Duncan's  exquisite  picture.  It  is  said  to  have  cost 
the  almost  continuous  labor  of  two  years  ;  and  the  antici- 
j^ated  expense  of  multiplying  it  by  the  graver  —  and  never 
was  there  a  picture  more  worthy  —  is  calculated  at  about 
three  thousand  pounds.  The  pictorial  history  of  Scotland 
promises  to  excel  all  its  other  histories,  and  it  does  not 
contain  a  more  brilliant  page  than  that  contributed  by 
Duncan. 

Gallant  Highlanders,  men  of  warm  hearts  and  tender 
feelings,  and  spirits  that  kindle  as  the  danger  comes,  the 
phantom  of  mistaken  loyalty  deludes  you  no  longer;  you 
have  closed  with  a  better  faith ;  and,  while  the  strength 
of  the  character  still  remains  unbroken,  all  its  fierceness  is 
gone.  I  have  lived  amid  the  quiet  solitude  of  your  hills, 
and,  as  I  have  passed  your  cottages  at  the  close  of  evening, 
have  heard  the  voice  of  psalms  from  within.  I  have  sat 
with  you  at  the  humble  board,  to  share  your  proffered 
hospitality,  —  the  hospitality  of  willing  hearts,  that  thought 
not  of  the  scanty  store  whence  the  supply  was  derived. 
I  have  marked  your  untaught  courtesy,  ever  ready  to  yield 
to  the  stranger,  and  have  laid  me  down  in  security  at 
night  amid  your  hamlets,  with  only  the  latch  on  the  door. 
1  have  seen  you  pouring  forth  your  thousands  from  brown 
distant  moors  and  narrow  glens,  to  listen  with  devout 
attention  to  the  words  of  life  from  the  lips  of  your  much- 
loved  pastors,  and  to  worship  God  among  your  mountains 
in  the  open  air.  I  know,  too,  the  might  that  slumbers 
amid  your  gentleness  of  nature ;  and  that,  when  the  day 
of  battle  comes,  "  and  level  for  the  charge  your  arms  are 
laid,"  desperate  indeed  must  that  enemy  be,  and  much  in 
love  with  death,  that  awaits  the  onset.  A  day  may  yet 
arrive,  should  Socialism  and  Chartism,  with  their  coward 
cruelty,  inundate  society  in  the  plains,  when  we  may  look 


CRITICISM   FOR  THE   UNINITIATED.  361 

to  your  hills  for  succor ;  but  that  day  has  not  yet  come. 
You  tell  us  that,  though  little  able  to  assist  the  church 
with  the  pen  or  on  the  platform  in  her  present  troubles, 
your  hearts  are  all  with  us ;  and  that,  should  the  worst 
come  to  the  worst,  we  may  reckon  on  the  Highlanders  of 
Scotland  as  thirty  thousand  fighting  men.  And  we  know 
what  sort  of  fighting  men  you  are,  and  what  sort  of  hearts 
you  bear.  But  reserve  your  strength,  brave  countrymen, 
for  another  day  and  a  different  quarrel.  Should  the  church 
which  you  love  fall  prostrate  before  her  adversaries,  and 
wickedness  rush  unchecked  over  the  land  to  trample  and 
destroy,  your  swords  may  be  required,  not  to  protect  her 
friends  from  her  enemies,  but  to  protect  both  her  friends 
and  her  enemies  too. 


SIXTH    ARTICLE. 

Immediately  be  low  one  of  Wilkie's  admirable  pictures, 
—  "  The  Spanish  Posado,"  —  there  is  a  painting,  not  par- 
ticularly showy,  and  which  might  possibly  enough  come  to 
be  overlooked  among  productions  of  less  merit  and  more 
glitter,  but  which  is  at  once  so  simple,  unaffected,  and  true 
to  nature,  that  it  bears  the  formidable  neighborhood  won- 
derfully well.  It  is  the  work  of  a  young  and  rising  artist, 
Tavernor  Knott,  —  a  gentleman  who,  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
two,  has  learned  to  compress  a  large  amount  of  just  thought 
and  fine  feeling  within  a  few  square  feet  of  canvas,  and 
who,  I  am  convinced,  will  be  better  known  to  his  country- 
folks in  the  future  than  he  is  at  present.  I  do  not  know 
whether  his  subject  might  not  hav6  prejudiced  me  in  hia 
favor,  —  "A  Scotch  Family  Emigrating ; "  but  I  have  cer- 
tainly derived  much  pleasure  from  an  attentive  perusal  of 
his  picture,  and  it  has  served  to  recall  to  my  recollection 
a  good  many  similar  scenes  from  real  life,  of  a  half-pleasing, 
half-melancholy  character.  I  have  never  yet  seen  a  party 
31 


362  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

of  emigrants  quitting  their  country  forever,  half-broken- 
hearted, as  they  almost  always  are,  without  forgetting  all 
my  political  economy,  and  sympathizing  with  them  in  their 
regret.  Hazlitt  says,  very  truly  though  somewhat  quaintly, 
that  when  men  compassionate  themselves,  other  men  com- 
passionate them  too.  We  admire  the  fortitude  of  the  stoic, 
but  we  never  pity  his  sufferings.  But  a  kindly,  manly 
Scot,  proud  of  his  country,  and  attached  to  his  friends, 
and  yet  compelled  by  stern  necessity  to  part  from  both,  and 
parting  from  them  with  a  swelling  heart  and  wet  eyes,  — 
we  must  pity  the  poor  fellow,  and  feel  sorry  that  he  is 
leaving  us,  let  population  increase  as  it  may.  I  know  of 
gcenes  which  have  taken  place  in  the  Highlands  of  Scot- 
land which  I  hope  neither  Malthus  nor  M'Culloch  could 
have  contemplated  with  a  dry  eye ;  and  I  shall  instance 
one  of  them.  All  the  Highlanders  of  an  inland  district  in 
Sutherlandshire  were  ejected  from  their  homes  by  the  late 
Duke  a  good  many  years  ago,  to  make  way  for  a  few  sheep- 
farmers.  The  poor  people,  a  moral  and  religious  race, 
bound  to  their  rugged  hills  with  a  strength  of  attachment 
hardly  equalled  in  any  other  country,  could  not  be  made 
to  believe  the  summonses  of  removal  real.  Their  fathers 
had  lived  and  died  among  these  very  hills  for  thousands  of 
years.  They  had  spent  their  blood,  and  had  laid  down 
their  lives  of  old,  for  the  good  Earls  of  Sutherland.  Nay, 
when  their  Countess,  in  her  maiden  years,  had  expressed  a 
wish  to  raise  a  regiment  among  them  for  the  service  of  the 
country,  a  regiment  had  risen  at  the  bidding  of  their  chief's 
daughter,  and  had  marched  off  to  the  war.  Every  man 
among  them  brought  his  Bible  with  him,  and  the  enemy 
never  bore  them  down  in  the  charge.  And  now  could  it 
be  possible  that  they  were  to  be  forced  out  of  their  own 
country!  They  at  first  thought  of  resistance  ;  and,  had 
they  carried  the  thought  into  action,  it  would  have  af- 
forded perilous  employment  to  a  thousand  armed  men  to 
have  ejected  every  eight  hundred  of  them;  but  they  had 
read  their  New  Testaments,  and  they  knew  that  the  Duke 


CRITICISM   FOR  THE   UNINITIATED.  363 

had  become  proprietor  of  the  soil  ;  and  so  the  design 
dropped.  Sliall  we  write  it?  —  some  of  their  houses  were 
actually  fired  over  their  heads,  and  yet  there  was  no  blood- 
shed !  Convinced  at  length  that  no  other  alternative 
remained  for  them,  they  gathered  in  a  body  in  the  church- 
yard of  the  district  to  take  leave  of  their  country  for  ever, 
and  of  the  dust  of  their  fathers  last.  And  there,  seated 
among  the  graves,  men  and  women,  the  old  and  the  young, 
with  one  accord,  and  under  the  influence  of  one  feeling, 
they  all  "  lifted  up  their  voices  and  wept."  This  tract  of 
the  Highlands  is  now  inhabited  by  sheep. 

Mr.  Knott's  picture  represents  rather  a  Lowland  than  a 
Highland  scene.  There  is  a  humble  cottage,  half  over- 
shadowed by  trees,  in  the  foreground,  surrounded  by  a 
level  country.  The  sea  spreads  beyond.  We  see  the  ship 
in  the  distance  which  is  to  bear  away  the  emigrants  ;  and 
the  loaded  wagon  in  the  middle  ground  is  evidently  con- 
veying their  efiects  to  the  shore.  The  group  stands  in 
front  of  the  cottage.  There  ai"e  a  few  supplementary  fig- 
ures introduced  into  the  scene,  partly  for  the  sake  of  height- 
ening the  efifect  by  the  force  of  contrast,  —  for  they  have 
no  direct  interest  in  it,  —  and  partly  to  bring  out  its  minor 
details;  for,  though  little  moved  by  it,  they  are  yet  all 
employed  in  it.  One,  an  elderly  man,  with  spectacles  on, 
is  painfully  scrawling  out  a  direction-card  for  a  box  ;  there 
is  a  rough,  thick-set,  sun-burned  sailor  from  the  beach,  who 
is  leaning  over  him,  evidently  criticising  the  penmanship, 
but  satisfied,  apparently,  that  it  may  just  pass;  and  a  tall 
stri])ling  stands  directly  in  front,  prepared  with  a  coil  of 
cord  to  bear  the  box  away.  In  an  opposite  corner  there  is 
a  boy  of  the  family  parting  with  a  favorite  dog,  which  he 
is  handing  over,  bound  in  a  string,  to  a  companion.  The 
poor  little  fellow  is  much  dejected,  and  not  at  all  likely 
soon  to  forget  Scotland,  nor  his  dog  either.  The  stroke  is 
a  fine  one ;  but  there  is  a  still  finer  stroke  in  the  same 
part  of  the  group.  A  barefooted,  simple-looking  lassie,  of 
about  fifteen,  who  has  been  living  with  the  family,  taking 


364  LTTERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

care  of  the  child,  a  sweet,  chubby  thing,  is  kissing  her 
charge,  not  dry-eyed,  and  bidding  it  farewell ;  and  baby, 
though  it  does  not  exactly  know  what  is  the  matter,  is 
quite  disposed  to  return  the  caress. 

A  vigorous  man,  in  the  prime  of  early  manhood,  —  the 
father  of  the  boy  and  the  infant,  and  of  two  little  girls  in 
the  foreground,  —  has  turned  round  in  a  half-absent  mood 
to  the  shut  door.  He  has  been  bearing  up,  with  apparent 
fortitude,  for  the  sake  of  the  others,  and  under  a  high 
sense  of  what  constitutes  the  firm  and  the  manly  in  char- 
acter. The  present,  however,  is  a  moment  of  partial  for- 
getfulness  ;  the  assumed  firmness  is  laid  down,  and  his 
thoughts  are  hovering  in  sadness,  as  he  looks  back  on  his 
humble  dwelling,  between  the  enjoyments  of  the  past  and 
the  uncertainties  of  the  future.  His  wife,  a  woman  of  great 
beauty, — not  merely  that  of  feature  and  complexion,  which 
may  exist  wholly  disjoined  from  all  that  we  most  value  in 
the  sex,  but  that  of  expression  and  character  also,  —  is 
leaning  on  the  arm  of  her  father-in-law,  a  venerable  old 
man.  Unlike  her  husband,  she  has  had  no  part  to  act  on 
the  occasion,  nor  has  §he  simulated  the  fortitude  or  the 
indifference  which  she  does  not  possess  nor  feel.  She  is 
drowned  in  tears.  The  sweet  little  girl  who  holds  on  by 
her  gown,  and  the  girl  beside  grandpapa,  are  both  too 
young  to  participate  in  the  general  regret ;  and  yet  they, 
too,  have  an  air  of  absence  and  unhappiness  about  them, 
caught,  as  it  were,  by  sympathy  from  the  others.  The  old 
man,  the  patriarch  of  the  family,  is  one  of  the  most  striking 
figures  in  the  picture.  Wilkie  himself  has  rarely  produced 
anything  more  characteristically  Scotch.  There  is  a  deep 
seriousness  impressed  on  the  somewhat  rugged  features, 
blent  with  a  dash  of  sadness ;  for  he,  too,  feels  that  he  is 
leaving  his  home  and  the  country  of  his  fathers.  But  he 
has  thought  of  another  and  more  certain  home ;  and  the 
consolations  which  he  is  pressing  on  his  daughter-in-law, 
whose  hand  he  is  affectionately  grasping  in  his  own,  are 
evidently  of  the  highest  character.     Venerable  old  man  J 


CRITICISM   FOR  THE   UNINITIATED.  365 

Divested  of  hopes  and  beliefs  such  as  yours,  the  aged  emi- 
grant would  be  of  all  men  the  most  unhappy.  It  has  been 
well  said  by  Goldsmith,  that  "  a  mind  long  habituated  to 
a  certain  set  of  objects  insensibly  becomes  fond  of  seeing 
them,  visits  them  from  habit,  and  parts  from  them  with 
reluctance ;  "  and  it  is  chiefly  from  such  objects  that  age 
derives  its  pleasures.  It  cannot  give  to  novelty  the  feelings 
appropriated  by  recollection ;  and  must  fare  ill,  therefore, 
in  a  foreign  land,  in  the  midst  of  what  is  strange,  and  what, 
from  its  very  nature,  cannot  become  otherwise,  —  in  the 
midst,  too,  of  hai'dships  and  privation.  The  old  man  in 
such  circumstances  must  be  either  like  the  cottar  of  Burns, 
—  the  "  priest-like  father  "  of  the  family,  —  or  he  must  be 
by  much  the  unhappiest  member  of  it. 

Such  is  an  imperfect  description  of  Mr.  Knott's  picture, 
as  I  have  been  enabled  to  read  it.  It  has  no  doubt  its 
faults,  like  every  other;  but  these  seem  mostly  to  be  mere 
faults  of  execution,  from  which  no  young  artist  can  be 
wholly  free,  whatever  his  genius,  —  not  faults  of  concep- 
tion. The  foliage  of  the  trees  which  half-embosom  the 
cottage  does  not  repose  in  the  softened  sunshine  with  per- 
haps all  the  grace  of  nature,  and  the  tiled  cottage  does 
not  strike  as  characteristically  Scottish.  A  roof  of  heath, 
or  fern,  or  straw,  with  here  and  there  a  patch  of  stone-crop, 
and  here  and  there  a  tuft  of  grass  or  a  cluster  of  house- 
leek,  would  better  repay  the  painter's  study.  But  these 
are  very  minute  matters ;  and  he  would  be  a  connoisseur 
worth  looking  at  who  would  place  such  things  in  the  bal- 
ance against  the  large  amount  of  thought  and  feeling  dis- 
played in  the  group.  The  painter  who  can  impart  character 
to  men  and  women,  both  national  and  individual,  can  well 
afford  to  leave  a  tree  or  a  cottage  without  much  to  dis- 
tinguish them,  and  be  a  superior  painter  still. 

Of  all  the  figures  of  the  piece,  the  old  man  pleases  me 
the  best,  though  the  female,  his  daughter-in-law,  is  also 
very  exquisite.     I  have  perused  with  deep  interest  the  let- 
ters of  an  aged  emigrant,  who  quitted  the  north  of  Scot 
31* 


366  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

land  for  Upper  Canada  about  eight  years  ago.  He  was 
one  of  the  excellent  though  now  fast  diminishing  body 
known  in  Ross-shire  and  the  neighboring  districts  by  the 
name  of  the  men ;  and,  though  marked  perhaps  by  a  few 
eccentricities,  he  was  by  no  means  a  low  specimen  of  the 
class.  He  settled  among  some  of  the  outer  townships,  — 
I  forget  which,  —  where  there  were  no  ministers  and  no 
churches ;  and  he  saw  for  the  first  time,  in  his  seventieth 
year,  the  Sabbath  rise  over  the  wild  and  trackless  woods 
of  America,  all  unmarked  from  the  other  days  of  the  week. 
But  John  Clark  had  brought  his  Bible  with  him,  and  no 
superficial  knowledge  of  its  contents  ;  and,  regularly  as 
the  day  came  round,  he  assembled  his  family,  like  one 
of  the  Pilgrim  fathers  of  old,  for  the  purpose  of  religious 
worship,  and  to  press  upon  them  the  importance  of  religious 
truth.  Some  of  the  neighbors  learned  to  drop  in.  His 
fervent  prayers,  and  his  homely  but  forcible  expositions, 
full  of  masculine  thought,  had  the  true  popular  germ  in 
them  ;  and  John's  log  cottage  became  the  meetinghouse 
of  the  thinly-peopled  district;  until  at  length  the  accumu- 
lating infirmities  of  a  period  of  life  greatly  advanced  in- 
terfered with  his  self-imposed  duties,  and  set  him  aside. 
He  is  still  alive,  however,  at  least  he  was  so  a  few  months 
ago ;  and  at  that  time,  in  the  midst  of  great  bodily  de- 
bility, far  removed  from  all  his  Christian  friends  of  the 
same  stamp  or  standing  with  himself,  and  with  the  near 
prospect  of  laying  down  his  worn-out  frame,  to  mingle 
with  the  soil  in  some  gloomy  recess  of  the  wild  forest, 
thousands  of  miles  from  the  lonely  Highland  churchyard 
where  the  remains  of  his  fathers  and  of  some  of  his  children 
are  laid,  with  those  of  the  wife  of  his  youth,  John  was  yet 
more  than  resigned  ;  he  was  rejoicing,  —  will  our  readers 
guess  for  what?  He  had  just  heard  of  the  revival  at 
Kilsyth,  and  of  the  attitude  assumed  by  the  Church  of 
Scotland  in  behalf  of  the  rights  of  the  Christian  people 
and  of  the  Headship  of  her  Divine  Master.     What,  I 


CRITICISM   FOR  THE  UNINITIATED.  Ji67 

marvel,  does  infidelity   propose   giving  to  such   men   in 
exchange  for  their  religion  ? 

I  am  impressed  by  the  absolute  necessity  which  exists 
for  emigration.  Circumstances  have  settled  the  point. 
Whatever  the  sacrifice  of  feeling,  it  has  ceased  to  be  an 
open  question  whether  or  no  our  countrymen  should  leave 
us  for  other  fields  of  exertion.  The  population  of  the 
country  is  already  redundant  in  a  degree  which  occasions 
much  distress  among  the  working  classes,  and  much 
consequent  bad  feeling ;  for  the  true  cause  of  the  evil  is 
misunderstpod  ;  and  this  already  redundant  population  is 
increasing  at  the  portentous  rate  of  nearly  a  thousand  per 
day.  Besides,  it  is  according  to  the  design  of  Providence 
that  the  human  i-ace  should  spread  forth  as  they  multiply. 
The  Scotch  are  only  doing  for  Canada  and  the  insular 
regions  of  the  far  south  what  the  Celtaa  and  the  Scandina- 
vians did  for  Scotland  three  thousand  years  ago  ;  and  is  it 
not  well  that  the  process  should  be  so  diflferent  now  from 
what  it  was  when  the  Goths  and  the  Vandals  overwhelmed 
the  Roman  emnire?  It  is  civilization  and  the  arts  that 
are  advancing  on  the  regions  of  barbarism,  and  sending 
out  their  pickets  and  their  advanced  guards  far  into  the 
waste,  —  not  barbarism  that  is  bursting  in,  as  of  old,  to 
bear  down  civilization  and  the  arts.  But  we  can  at  once 
recognize  these  principles,  — principles,  indeed,  too  obvious 
not  to  be  recognized,  —  and  yet  regret  cases  of  what  we 
may  term  wholesome  emigration  none  the  less.  Nothing 
can  be  more  healthy  than  the  drain  on  a  redundant  town 
or  country  population  :  it  is  blood-letting  to  an  apoplectic 
patient ;  and  the  emigrating  thousands  are  as  little  missed 
as  water  withdrawn  from  the  ocean.  "  The  crowds  close 
in,  and  all's  forgotten."  Very  different  is  the  case,  how- 
ever, when  the  population  of  upland  districts  have  been 
torn  up  root  and  branch,  and  uninhabited  wildei'nesses 
formed  where  a  simple-hearted  but  surely  noble  race  lived 
contented  in  times  of  quiet,  and  constituted  the  strength 
of  their  country  in  the  day  of  war.      There  have  been 


868  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

cottages  on  many  a  hillside  emptied  of  their  inhabitants 
within  the  last  twenty  years,  which  shall  never  again  be 
gladdened  by  the  domestic  circle  ;  and  the  heath  is  creep- 
ing slowly  in  lonely  dells  and  sweej^ing  acclivities,  over 
many  a  narrow  range  of  meadow,  and  many  a  little  field 
whose  flattened  and  sinking  furrows  shall  never  again  yield 
to  the  plough.  The  contemplation  of  such  scenes  amid 
the  depopulated  solitudes  of  the  Highlands  has  always 
inclined  me  to  sadness,  especially  in  the  inland  districts 
which,  as  they  nad  no  dependence  on  the  fluctuations  of 
trade,  were  little  exposed  to  those  extreme  depressions 
which  have  borne  so  heavily  of  late  years  on  the  inhabi- 
tants of  the  islands  and  the  sea-coasts,  and  in  which,  I 
know  from  experience,  much  happiness  has  been  enjoyed, 
and  an  intense  love  of  country  cherished. 

Rather  more  than  twelve  years  ago  I  was  led  into  the 
central  Highlands  of  the  north.  I  first  left  behind  me  the 
comparatively  level  fields  of  the  low  country,  with  their 
hedgerows  and  intervening  belts  of  planting,  and  then  the 
upper  skirting  of  forest,  which  waved  mile  after  mile  on 
the  lower  declivities  of  the  hills.  I  next  passed  on  a  half- 
obliterated  path  along  the  upper  ridges,  rising  and  de- 
scending alternately,  —  now  shut  out  from  the  widening 
landscape  in  some  brown  moory  hollow,  roughened  with 
huge  fragments  of  rock,  now  on  a  swelling  eminence  that, 
overtopping  the  previously  surmounted  height,  blended 
in  one  vast  prospect  the  region  of  moor,  of  forest,  and  of 
corn,  and,  far  beyond,  the  widely  extended  sea.  The  last 
eminence  was  at  length  surmounted,  and  a  broad  tract  of 
table-land,  slightly  depressed  toward  the  middle,  bounded 
on  the  opposite  side  by  low  craggy  hills,  with  here  and 
there  an  inky  pool  and  here  and  there  a  gloomy  morass, 
spread  out  for  miles  before  me  in  black  and  unvaried  ster- 
ility. I  toiled  drearily  across,  and  reached  the  opposite 
boundary  of  hill.  It  overlooked  a  deep  pastoral  valley  of 
considerable  extent.  A  wild  Highland  stream,  skirted  on 
either  bank  by  a  straggling  vow  of  alders,  went  winding 


CEITICISM   FOR  THE  UNINITIATED.  369 

through  the  midst.  On  either  side  there  were  patches  of 
vivid  green,  encircled  by  the  brown  heath,  like  islands  by 
the  ocean,  which  had  once  been  furrowed  by  the  plough. 
As  I  advanced  I  saw  the  ruins  of  deserted  cottages.  All 
was  solitary  and  desolate.  Roof-trees  were  decaying  within 
mouldering  walls.  A  rank  vegetation  had  covered  the  si- 
lent floors,  and  was  waving  over  hearths  the  fires  of  which 
had  been  forever  extinguished.  A  solitary  lapwing  was 
screaming  over  the  ruins,  rising  and  falling  in  sudden  starts, 
darting  off  along  the  ground,  now  to  the  right,  now  to  the 
left,  and  then  turning  abrujDtly  round  in  mid  air,  and 
almost  brushing  me  as  she  passed.  She  had  built  her  nest 
within  some  deserted  cottage,  and  was  employing  her 
every  instinct  to  lure  me  away.  A  melancholy  i-aven  was 
croaking  on  a  neighboring  eminence.  There  was  the  faint 
murmur  of  the  stream,  and  the  low  moan  of  the  breeze ; 
but  every  sound  of  man  bad  long  passed  from  the  air ; 
and  the  bright  sunshine  seemed  to  fall  idly  on  the  brown 
slopes  and  greener  levels  of  this  uninhabited  and  desolate 
valley.  I  have  rarely  been  more  impressed.  I  was  re- 
minded of  what  I  had  i-ead  of  eastern  armies,  whose  track 
may  be  followed  years  after  their  march  by  ruined  villages 
and  a  depopulated  country,  —  of  scenes,  too,  described  by 
the  prophets,  —  lands  once  populous  "grown  places  where 
no  man  dwelleth,  or  son  of  man  passeth  through." 


870  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 


III. 

GEOLOGY  VERSUS  ASTRONOMY. 

It  was  remarked  early  in  the  last  century  by  a  French 
wit,  who  was  also  an  astronomer,  that  when  the  potentates 
of  earth  ceased  to  quarrel  about  their  sublunary  territories, 
they  would  in  all  likelihood  begin  to  dispute  about  the 
plains  and  mountain  ranges  of  the  moon.  They  would 
give,  he  said,  their  own  names  to  its  peaks  and  craters, 
and  fall  to  blows  for  the  nominal  possession  of  some  of  its 
more  prominent  eminences  or  profounder  hollows.  The 
prediction,  however,  seems  to  be  as  far  from  its  fulfilment 
as  ever.  The  present  war  with  Russia  shows  that  the  quar- 
rels of  rulers  respecting  their  earthly  territories,  so  far  from 
being  at  an  end,  or  nearly  so,  are  as  serious  and  irreconcil- 
able as  at  any  former  period  ;  and  hitherto,  at  least,  kings 
and  princes  have  left  all  disputes  about  the  nomenclature 
of  the  moon's  geography  to  be  settled  by  the  moon's  ge- 
ographers. The  celestial  map-makers  have  already  had 
their  quan-els  on  the  subject.  One  of  them  named  the 
places  on  the  moon's  surface  after  philosophers  eminent  in 
all  the  various  departments  of  mind;  another  named  them 
after  the  terrestrial  seas  and  mountains  which  they  seemed 
to  resemble ;  a  third,  interposing,  strove  to  give  them  buck 
to  the  philosophers  again,  but  struck  off  the  former  list 
all  philosophers  save  the  astronomical  ones  ;  and  now  the 
moon's  surface  bears,  in  the  maps  at  least,  marks  of  all  the 
three  combatants.  It  has  its  Alps  and  its  Apennines  and 
its  Caucasus,  its  Sea  of  Serenity  and  its  Sea  of  Storms, 
Its  Aristarchus  and  its  Plato,  its  Tycho  and  its  Coper- 
<iicu8.  There  is,  as  we  may  perceive,  no  danger  of  a  too 
unbroken  peace  on  earth  regarding  the  condition  of  the 


GEOIOGT  VERSUS  ASTRONOMY.  371 

moon,  or  of  any  of  the  other  heavenly  bodies,  even  though 
neither  Napoleon  nor  Nicholas  should  interfere  in  the 
quarrel. 

In  fine,  every  department  of  science  has  its  controver- 
sies ;  and  it  is  well  that  it  should  be  so.  It  saves  the 
world  from  all  danger  of  connivance  to  deceive  it,  on  the 
part  of  scientific  men,  —  a  thing  which  the  world  is  some- 
what prone  to  suspect,  —  and  proves,  on  the  whole,  the  best 
mode  of  eliciting  truth.  There  are  certain  stages,  too,  in 
the  course  of  discovery,  when  controversy  becomes  inevi- 
table. "Tempests  in  the  state  are  commonly  greatest," 
says  Bacon,  "  when  things  grow  to  equality,  as  natural 
tempests  are  greatest  about  the  equinoctia."  And  we  find 
that  it  is  so  in  science  also.  When  comparatively  new 
sciences  rise,  in  certain  departments  specially  their  own, 
to  assert  an  equality  with  old  ones,  that,  when  they  stood 
alone,  had  been  extended  beyond  their  just  limits,  contro- 
versies almost  always  result  from  the  new-born  equality  in 
the  disputed  province.  In  the  middle  ages,  for  instance* 
there  existed  but  one  great  science,  —  theology  ;  and, 
pressed  far  beyond  its  just  limits,  it  impinged  on  almost 
every  province  of  physical  research  and  every  department 
of  mind.  In  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries — pecu- 
liarly the  ages  of  maritime  discovery  —  geography  rose 
into  importance  ;  and  after  a  prolonged  controversy,  which 
at  one  time  had  well-nigh  crushed  Columbus,  it  was  finally 
established,  in  opposition  to  the  findings  of  St.  Augustine 
and  Lactantius,  that  the  world  is  round,  not  flat,  and  that 
it  has  antipodes.  In  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centu- 
ries astronomy  became  a  great  and  solid  science  ;  and-, 
after  a  still  fiercer  controversy  than  that  of  the  geographers, 
it  asserted  a  supremacy  in  its  own  special  walk  against 
popish  theologians  such  as  Caccini  and  Bellarmine,  and 
against  Protestants  such  as  Turretine.  We  have  seen  a 
similar  controversy  carried  on  in  the  present  century  — 
which  has  witnessed  the  rise  of  geology,  just  as  the  fif- 
teenth, sixteenth,  and  seventeenth  centuries  witnessed  that 


372  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFie. 

of  geography  and  astronomy,  —  between  theologians  who 
were  also  geologists,  such  as  Chalmers,  Sedgwick,  and 
Sumner,  and  theologians  who  were  wholly  ignorant  of 
geology,  such  as  Granville  Pen,  Eleazor  Lord,  and  Moses 
Stuart.  And,  as  in  astronomy  and  geography,  the  contro- 
versy may  now  be  regarded  as  ultimately  settled  in  favor 
of  the  new  science,  within  at  least  the  new  science's  own 
proper  province.  There  are,  however,  other  controversies 
than  theological  ones,  wich  rise  when,  according  to  Bacon, 
"  things  grow  to  equality ; "  and  that  equality  to  which 
geology  has  attained  with  astronomy  during  the  last  fifty 
years  may  be  properly  regarded  as  the  real  cause  of  the 
very  interesting  controversy  carried  on  at  the  present 
time  between  the  author  of  the  "  Essay  on  the  Plurality 
of  Worlds,"  understood  to  be  one  of  the  distinguished  or- 
naments of  English  science,  and  our  great  counti'yman  Sir 
David  Brewster,  —  a  philosopher  who,  while  supreme  in 
his  own  special  walk,  is  perhaps  of  all  living  men  the  most 
extensively  acquainted  with  the  general  domain  of  physi- 
cal science.  The  English  writer,  though  he  presses  his 
argument  by  much  too  far,  may  be  regarded  as  representa- 
tive of  the  geological  side  ;  Sir  David  of  the  astronomical. 
There  are,  we  have  said,  certain  stages  in  the  course  of 
discovery  at  which  controversy  becomes  inevitable ;  and  it 
seems  demonstrative  of  the  fact  that  the  new  arguments 
in  which  these  controversies  originate  arise  much  about 
the  same  time,  without  concert  or  communication,  in 
minds  engaged  in  the  same  or  similar  pursuits.  Had  they 
not  been  originated  by  the  man  who  first  made  them 
known,  they  would  have  been  originated  almost  contem- 
poraneously by  some  one  else.  Almost  all  discovery  has 
a  similar  course.  Adams  and  Le  Verrier  were  engaged  at 
the  same  time  in  calculating  the  irregularities  of  Uranus, 
and  inferred  from  them  the  existence  and  position  of  the 
great  planet,  actually  discovered  almost  simultaneously, 
shortly  after,  by  Dr.  Galle  and  Professor  Challis ;  and  it  is 
a  known  fact  that  Mr.  Lassel  and  Professor  Bond  discov- 


GEOLOGY   VERSUS   ASTRONOMY.  873 

ered  on  the  same  evening  the  eighth  moon  of  Saturn,  though 
the  Atlantic  flowed  between  them  at  the  time.  And  wo 
find  a  resembling  simultaneousness  of  inference  and  conclu- 
sion exemplified  by  the  work  which  has  given  occasion  to 
the  present  controversy.  The  argument  which  it  ampli- 
fies and  expands,  and,  as  we  think,  carries  by  much  too 
far,  and  into  conclusions  not  legitimate,  was  first  given  to 
the  world  seven  years  ere  the  appearance  of  this  English 
volume,  in  the  columns  of  a  Scotch  newspaper,  and  lull 
six  years  in  a  separate  work,  published  and  rather  exten- 
sively circulated  both  in  Britain  and  America.  And  in 
glancing  over  the  first  edition  of  the  "  Essay  on  the  Plu- 
rality of  Worlds,"  we  had  expected  —  not,  perhaps,  taking 
sufiiciently  into  account  that  simultaneity  of  thought  at 
certain  stages  of  acquirement  to  which  we  refer — that 
some  acknowledgment  ought  to  have  been  made  to  the 
writer  who  had  originated  the  argument  so  long  before. 
We  ascertain,  however,  from  the  second  edition  of  the 
English  work  now  before  us,  that  its  author  had  framed 
his  argument  for  himself,  independently  altogether  of  the 
previously-published  one.  "  I  have  no  wish,"  he  says, 
"  to  lay  any  stress  upon  the  originality  of  the  views  pre- 
sented in  the  Essay.  I  now  know  that,  several  years  ago 
(in  1849),  Hugh  Miller,  in  his  'First  Impressions  of  Eng- 
land '  (chap,  xvii),  presented  an  argument  from  geology 
very  much  of  the  nature  of  that  which  I  have  employed  / 
and  that  the  Rev.  Mr.  Banks,  in  a  little  tract  published  in 
1850,  urged  the  very  insecure  character  of  the  doctrine  that 
the  planets  and  stars  are  inhabited.  These  coincidences 
with  ray  views  I  did  not  know  till  my  Essay  was  not 
only  written  but  printed.  As  to  myself,  the  views  which 
I  have  at  length  committed  to  paper  have  long  been  in 
my  mind."  There  is  an  error  in  the  date  given  here.  The 
argument  to  which  the  author  of  the  Essay  refers  as 
"much  of  the  nature"  of  his  own  was  first  published,  not 
in  1849,  but  in  October,  1846,  when  it  appeared  in  the 
columns  of  the  "Witness"  as  part  of  one  of  the  chapters 
32 


874  LTTRRARY    AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

of  "  First  Impressions," —  a  work  which  was  published  in 
the  collected  form  as  a  volume  early  in  the  following  year. 
Essentially,  however,  the  reference  is  perfectly  satisfactory 
and,  mayhap,  not  wholly  uninteresting,  as  corroborative 
of  our  position,  that  at  certain  periods,  after  a  certain 
amount  of  fact  in  some  new  department  has  been  ac- 
quired, inferences  never  drawn  before  come  to  be  drawn 
simultaneously  by  minds  cut  oflf  by  circumstances  from  all 
intercourse  with  each  other.  The  argument,  as  originally 
stated  in  the  "  Witness,"  we  shall  take  the  liberty  to  re- 
peat, slightly  abridged,  not  only  from  its  bearing  on  one 
of  the  most  curious  controversies  of  modern  times,  but  as 
it  may  also  serve  to  indicate  what  we  deem  the  just  de- 
gree in  which  the  inferences  of  astronomers  regarding  the 
inhabitability  of  the  planets  are  to  be  qualified  by  the  facts 
of  the  geologist. 

"  There  is  a  sad  oppressiveness  in  that  sense  of  human  littleness 
which  the  great  truths  of  astronomy  have  so  direct  a  tendency  to 
inspire.  Man  feels  himself  lost  amid  the  sublime  magnitudes  of 
creation,  —  a  mere  atom  in  the  midst  of  infinity  ;  and  trembles  lest 
the  scheme  of  revelation  should  be  found  too  large  a  manifestation 
of  the  divine  care  for  so  tiny  an  ephemera.  Now,  I  am  much  mis- 
taken if  the  truths  of  geology  have  not  a  direct  tendency  to  restore 
him  to  his  true  place.  When  engaged  some  time  since  in  perusing 
one  of  the  sublimest  philosophic  poems  of  modern  times,  —  the 
'  Astronomical  Discourses  '  of  Dr.  Chalmers,  —  there  occurred  to  me 
a  new  argument  that  might  be  employed  against  the  infidel  objection 
which  the  work  was  expressly  written  to  remove.  The  infidel  points 
to  the  planets  ;  and,  reasoning  from  an  analogy  which  on  other  than 
geologic  data  the  Christian  cannot  challenge,  asks  whether  it  be  not 
more  probable  that  each  of  these  is,  like  our  own  earth,  not  only  a 
scene  of  creation,  but  also  a  home  of  rational,  accountable  creatures. 
And  then  follows  the  objection,  as  fully  stated  by  Dr.  Chalmers, '  Does 
not  the  largeness  of  that  field  which  astronomy  lays  open  to  the  view 
of  modern  science  throw  a  suspicion  over  the  truth  of  the  gospel  his- 
tory ?  and  how  shall  we  reconcile  the  greatness  of  that  wonderful 
movement  which  was  made  in  heaven  for  the  redemption  of  fallen 
man  with  the  comparative  meanness  and  obscurity  of  our  species  ?  ' 


GEOLOGY  VERSUS  ASTRONOMY.         875 

Geology,  whim  the  Doctor  wrote,  was  in  a  state  of  comi;arative  in- 
fancy. It  has  since  been  largely  developed ;  and  we  have  been 
introduced,  in  consequence,  to  the  knowledge  of  some  five  or  six 
different  creations  of  which  this  globe  was  the  successive  scene  ere 
the  present  creation  was  called  into  being.  At  the  time  the  '  Astro- 
nomical Discourses '  were  published,  the  infidel  could  base  his  analogy 
on  his  knowledge  of  but  one  creation ;  whereas  we  can  now  base 
our  analogy  on  the  knowledge  of  at  least  six  creations,  the  various 
productions  of  which  we  can  handle,  examine,  and  compare.  And 
how,  it  may  be  asked,  does  this  immense  extent  of  basis  affect  the 
objection  with  which  Dr.  Chalmers  has  grappled  so  vigorously  ?  It 
annihilates  it  completely.  You  argue,  may  not  the  geologist  say  to 
the  infidel,  that  yonder  planet,  because  apparently  a  scene  of  crea- 
tion like  our  own,  is  also  a  home  of  accountable  creatures  like  our- 
selves. But  the  extended  analogy  furnished  by  geologic  science  is 
full  against  you.  Exactly  so  might  it  have  been  argued  regarding 
the  earth  during  the  early  creation  represented  by  the  Silurian  system, 
and  yet  the  master-existence  of  that  extended  period  was  a  crustacean. 
Exactly  so  might  it  have  been  argued  regarding  the  earth  during 
the  term  of  the  creation  represented  by  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  ; 
and  yet  the  master-existence  of  that  scarce  less  extended  period  was 
a  fish.  During  the  creation  represented  by  the  Carboniferous  period, 
with  all  its  rank  vegetation  and  green-reflected  light,  the  master- 
existence  was  a  fish  still.  During  the  creation  represented  by  the 
Oolite,  the  master-existence  was  a  reptile,  a  bird,  or  a  marsupial 
animal.  During  the  creation  of  the  Cretaceous  period,  there  was  no 
further  advance.  During  the  creation  of  the  Tertiary  formation, 
the  master-existence  was  a  mammiferous  quadruped.  It  was  not 
until  the  creation  to  which  we  ourselves  belong  was  called  into 
existence  that  a  rational  being,  born  to  anticipate  a  hereafter,  was 
ushered  upon  the  scene.  Suppositions  such  as  yours  would  have ' 
been  false  in  at  least  five  out  of  six  instances  ;  and  if  in  five  out  of 
six  consecutive  creations  there  existed  no  accountable  agent,  what 
shadow  of  reason  can  there  be  for  holding  that  a  different  arrange- 
ment obtains  in  five  out  of  six  contemporary  creations  ?  Mercury, 
Venus,  Mars,  Jupiter,  Saturn,  and  Uranus  may  have  all  their  plants 
and  animals,  and  yet  they  may  be  as  devoid  of  rational,  accountable 
creatures,  as  were  the  creations  of  the  Silurian,  Old  Ptcd  Sandstone, 
Carboniferous,  Oolitic,  Cretaceous,  and  Tertiary  periods.  They 
may  bo  merely  some  of  the  '  many  mansions '  prepared  in  the* 
'  Patter's  house '  for  the  immortal  existence  of  kingly  destiny  made 


376  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

in  the  Father's  own  image,  to  whom  this  little  world  forms  but  the 
cradle  and  the  nursery. 

"  But  the  eflFect  of  this  extended  geologic  basis  may  be  neutralized, 
the  infidel  may  urge,  by  extending  it  yet  a  little  further.  Why,  he 
may  ask,  since  we  draw  our  analogies  regarding  what  obtains  in  the 
other  planets  from  what  obtains  in  our  own,  —  why  not  conclude 
that  each  one  of  them  has  also  had  its  geologic  eras  and  revolutions, 
—  its  Silurian,  Old  Red  Sandstone,  Carboniferous,  Oolitic,  Creta- 
ceous, and  Tertiary  periods  ;  and  that  now,  contemporary  with  the 
creation  of  which  man  constitutes  the  master-existence,  they  have 
all  their  fully-matured  creations,  headed  by  rationality  ?  Why  not 
carry  the  analogy  thus  far?  Simply,  it  may  be  unhesitatingly  urged 
in  reply,  because  to  carry  it  so  far  would  be  to  carry  it  beyond  the 
legitimate  bounds  of  analogy ;  and  because  analogy  pursued  but  a 
single  step  beyond  the  limits  of  its  proper  province  is  sure  always 
to  land  the  pursuer  in  error.  Analogy  is  not  identity A  saga- 
cious guide  in  its  own  legitimate  field,  it  is  utterly  blind  and  senseless 
in  the  precincts  that  lie  beyond.  It  is  nicely  correct  in  its  generals, 
perversely  erroneous  in  its  particulars  ;  and  no  sooner  does  it  quit 
its  proper  province  —  the  general  for  the  particular  —  than  there 
start  up  around  it  a  multitude  of  solid  objections,  sternly  to  challenge 
it  as  a  trespasser  on  grounds  not  its  own.  How  infer,  we  may  well 
ask  the  infidel,  —  admitting,  for  the  argument's  sake,  that  all  the 
planets  come  under  the  law  of  geologic  revolution,  —  how  infer  that 
they  have  all,  or  any  of  them  save  our  own  earth,  arrived  at  the 
stage  of  stability  and  ripeness  essential  to  a  fully  developed  creation, 
with  a  reasoning  creature  as  its  master-existence  ?  Look  at  the 
immense  mass  of  Jupiter,  and  at  that  mysterious  mantle  of  cloud, 
barred  and  streaked  in  the  direction  of  his  irac/e-winds,  that  forever 
conceals  his  face.  May  not  that  dense  robe  of  cloud  be  the  ever- 
ascending  steam  of  a  globe  that,  in  consequence  of  its  vast  bulk,  has 
not  sufficiently  cooled  down  to  be  a  scene  of  life  at  all  ?  Even  the 
analogue  of  our  Silurian  creation  may  not  yet  have  begun  in  Jupiter. 
Look,  again,  at  Mercury,  where  it  bathes  in  a  flood  of  light,  en- 
veloped within  the  sun's  halo,  like  some  forlorn  smelter  sweltering 
beside  the  furnace  mouth.  A  similar  state  of  things  may  obtain  on 
the  surface  of  that  planet,  from  a  different  though  not  less  adequate 
cause.  But  it  is  unnecessary  to  deal  further  with  an  analogy  so 
palpably  overstrained,  and  whose  aggressive  place  and  position  in  a 
province  not  its  own  so  many  unanswerable  objections  start  up  to 
elucidate  and  fix." 


GEOLOGY   VERSUS    ASTRONOMY.  377 

Such,  virtually,  is  the  argument  which  has  been  repro- 
duced and  greatly  expanded  in  the  "  Essay  on  the  Plurality 
of  Worlds."  We  think,  however,  that  the  ingenious  and 
accomplished  author  of  that  work  has  pressed  it  too  far, 
and  forgotten  that,  though  it  introduces  into  the  reason- 
ings of  the  astronomer,  regarding  tlie  existence  of  rational 
inhabitants  in  the  planets,  the  modifying  element  of  tim,e^ 
it  does  not  affect  his  general  conclusions.  It  merely  shows, 
from  the  extended  experience  of  the  earth's  history  which 
geology  furnishes,  that  these  conclusions  may  not  refer  to 
the  now  of  the  planetary  universe,  but  to  some  period  in  a 
perhaps  very  remote  future.  For  the  argument  of  the  as- 
tronomer, in  a  condensed  form,  let  us  draw  on  Fontenelle, 

—  a  man  who  wrote  ere  geology  had  yet  any  existence  as 
a  science.  It  is  thus  he  makes  his  philosopher  reason  with 
his  lady  friend  the  Marchioness,  in  a  general  summary: 
"We  cannot  pretend  to  make  you  see  them  [the  inhab- 
itants of  the  planets] ;  and  you  cannot  insist  upon  demon- 
stration here,  as  you  would  in  a  mathematical  question ; 
but  you  have  all  the  proofs  you  could  desire  in  our  world, 

—  the  entire  resemblance  of  the  planets  with  the  earth 
which  is  inhabited,  the  impossibility  of  conceiving  any 
other  use  for  which  they  were  created,  the  fecundity  and 
magnificence  of  nature,  the  certain  regards  which  she  seems 
to  have  had  to  the  necessities  of  the  inhabitants,  as  in  giv- 
ing moons  to  those  planets  remote  from  the  sun,  and  more 
moons  still  to  those  yet  more  remote  ;  and,  what  is  still 
very  material,  there  are  all  things  to  be  said  on  one  side, 
and  nothing  on  the  other.  In  short,  supposing  that  these 
inhabitants  of  the  planets  really  exist,  they  could  not  de- 
clare themselves  by  more  marks,  or  by  marks  more  sensi- 
ble." Such  is  the  statement  of  Fontenelle ;  and,  though 
it  can  be  no  longer  affirmed  that  nothing:  can  be  said  on 
the  opposite  side,  seeing  that  we  have  now  a  very  ingenious 
volume  written  on  the  opposite  side,  by  not  merely  a  clever, 
but  also  a  highly  scientific  man,  it  will  be  found  that  in 
the  course  of  discovery  the  argument  has  rather  strength- 

32* 


378  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

ened  than  weakened.  Let  us  take,  for  instance,  the  por- 
tion of  it  founded  on  the  existence  and  distribution  of 
moons.  It  was  known  when  Fonteuelle  wrote  his  "  Con- 
versations on  the  Plurality  of  Worlds,"  that  the  earth  had 
one  moon,  Jupiter  four  moons,  and  Saturn  five.  It  ia 
now  farther  known  that  Saturn  has  eight  moons,  and 
Uranus  also  eight ;  and  if  only  one  has  yet^een  detected 
revolving  round  Neptune,  it  must  be  taken  into  account 
that  the  latter  planet  is  twice  further  distant  from  our 
earth  than  Saturn,  and  so  dimly  discernible  that  it  is  still 
a  question  whether  it  possesses  a  ring  or  no,  —  that  our 
earliest  acquaintance  with  it  is  not  yet  more  than  eight 
years  old,  —  that  even  Saturn's  eighth  moon  was  discov- 
ered only  six  years  ago,  —  and  that  not  only  not  a  few  of 
the  moons  of  Neptune,  but  even  some  of  the  moons  of 
Uranus,  may  be  still  to  find.  The  general  fact  still  holds 
good,  that  in  proportion  as  the  larger  planets  most  distant 
from  the  sun  require,  in  consequence,  moons  to  light  them, 
the  necessary  moons  they  have  got;  just  as  on  our  own 
earth  the  animals  who  live  most  distant  from  the  sun,  and 
require,  in  consequence,  thicker  protective  coverings  to 
keep  them  wann,  have  got  these  necessary  ])rotective  cov- 
erings, whether  of  fatty  matter  or  of  fur.  But  the  argu- 
ment derivable  from  the  light  and  heat  of  the  sun  himself 
seems  scarce  less  strong.  Let  us  avail  ourselves  of  it,  as 
condensed  by  Sir  David  Brewster,  from  Sir  Isaac  Newton's 
first  letter  to  Dr.  Bentley.  "  He  [Sir  Isaac]  thought  it , 
inexplicable  by  natural  causes,  and  to  be  ascribed  to  the 
counsel  and  contrivance  of  a  voluntary  agent,  that  the 
matter  [of  which  the  solar  system  is  formed]  should  divide 
itself  into  two  sorts,  part  of  it  composing  a  shining  body 
like  the  sun,  and  part  an  opaque  body  like  the  planets. 
Had  a  natural  and  blind  cause,  without  contrivance  and 
design,  placed  the  earth  in  the  centre  of  the  moon's  orbit, 
and  Jupiter  in  the  centre  of  his  system  of  satellites,  and 
the  sun  in  the  centre  of  the  planetary  system,  the  sun 
would  have  been  a  body  like  Jupiter,  and  the  earth  that 


GEOLOGY   VERSUS   ASTRONOMY.  879 

is,  without  light  and  heat;  and,  consequently,  he  [Sir 
Isaac]  knew  no  reason  why  there  is  only  one  body  qual- 
ified to  ffive  liirht  and  heat  to  all  the  rest,  but  because  tlie 
Author  of  the  system  thought  it  convenient,  and  because 
one  was  sufficient  to  warm  and  enlighten  all  the  rest." 
"To  warm  and  enlighten  all  the  rest!"  Newton  recog- 
nizes the  hand  of  the  Divine  Designer  in  that  peculiar 
collocation  of  matter  through  which  the  lamp  and  furnace 
of  the  system  is  placed  in  its  centre,  and  the  opaque 
objects  to  be  warmed  and  heated  arranged  at  certain  dis- 
tances around  it.  But  why  the  application  of  light  and 
heat  to  masses  of  dead  matter  ?  Light  and  heat,  in  a 
lesser  or  greater  degree,  are  necessary  to  the  existence  of 
all  organisms,  plant  and  animal,  but  not  to  the  exist- 
ence of  matter  not  organized.  A  lamp  is  necessary  in  a 
railway  carriage  that  travels  by  night,  if  there  be  passen- 
gers within,  but  not  in  the  least  necessary  to  the  carriage 
itself,  if  there  be  only  the  empty  seats  to  shine  upon.  And 
itj  of  all  the  planets  that  not  only  revolve  round  the  central 
lamp  and  furnace,  but  have  also  special  lamps  of  their 
own,  the  earth  be  the  only  inhabited  one,  not  only  is  the 
waste  most  enormous,  but  the  argument  of  design,  so  pro- 
foundly deduced  by  Sir  Isaac,  must  be  pronounced  to  be 
of  no  force  in  more  than  thirty  cases  for  one,  that  is,  in 
the  cases  of  all  the  supposed  uninhabited  planets  in  which 
there  exists  nothing  capable  of  being  benefited  by  being 
either  lighted  or  warmed.  Or,  to  avail  ourselves  of  Sir 
David's  happy  illustration,  the  Creator  of  a  solar  system 
with  many  uninhabited  planets,  and  only  a  single  inhabited 
one,  would  resemble  some  "  mighty  autocrat  who  should 
establish  a  railway  round  the  coasts  of  Europe  and  Asia, 
and  place  upon  it  an  enormous  train  of  first-class  carriages, 
impelled  year  afteryear  by  tremendous  steam-power,  wdiile 
there  was  a  philosoisher  and  a  culprit  in  a  humble  van, 
attended  by  hundreds  of  unoccupied  carriages  and  empty 
trucks."  And,  of  course,  were  the  unoccupied  carriages 
to  be  lighted  up  with  lamps  apparently  f(»r  the  benefit  of 


380  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

the  passengers  which  they  had  not,  and  w^ere  these  lamps 
to  be  fewer  or  more  numerous  in  each  case  in  meet  pro- 
portion with  the  degree  of  darkness  to  be  encountered,  and 
as  the  necessities  of  actual  passengers  would  require,  the 
puzzle  involved  in  the  why  and  wherefore  of  the  whole 
concern  would  be  still  increased.  The  old  argument  for 
the  inhabitancy  of  the  planets,  regarded  as  an  argument 
of  ultimate  design,  still  remains  unaffected  by  the  discov- 
eries of  the  geologist. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  let  not  the  modifying  influence 
of  these  discoveries  be  denied.  Such  is  their  effect  on  the 
argument,  that,  though  we  may  receive  it  in  full  as  truly 
solid,  we  may  yet,  in  perfect  consistency  with  its  conclu- 
sions, deem  it  a  moot  point  whether  there  be  at  the  present 
tim,e  a  single  inhabited  world  in  the  system  save  our  own. 
We  cannot  express,  either  by  figures  or  by  algebraic  signs, 
save  by  the  signs  that  express  unknown  quantity,  the  ge- 
ologic periods.  We  only  know  that  they  were  of  enormous 
extent.  Let  us,  however,  for  the  argument's  sake,  repre- 
sent the  period  during  which  man  has  been  upon  eartli  by 
the  sum  5000,  the  periods  during  which  the  successive 
plant-and-animal-bearing  systems  of  the  geologist  were  in 
being  by  the  sum  1,000,000,  and  the  earlier  death  periods, 
during  which  the  gneiss,  the  older  quartz  rock,  the  mica 
schist,  and  the  non-fossiliferous  clay  slate  were  formed,  by 
the  sum  500,000 ;  and  let  us  then  suppose  that  some  intel- 
lectual being,  wise  as  a  Newton,  and  reasoning  on  exactly 
his  principles  and  those  of  Sir  David  Brewster,  had  existed 
during  all  these  terms,  converted  into  yeai's,  at  a  distance 
from  the  earth  as  great  as  that  which  separates  the  earth 
from  the  planets  Mars  or  Venus;  further,  let  us  suppose 
that  once  in  every  live  thousand  years  for  the  first  half- 
million,  the  query  had  been  propounded  to  him  by  the 
Creator,  as  the  Creator  questioned  Job  of  old,  —  "  Intel- 
lectual being,  is  yonder  planet  inhabited,  or  no  ?  "  and  that 
during  the  million  of  years  that  followed,  the  query  should 
be  repeated  after  the  same  intervals  in  the  modified  form, 


GEOLOGY   VERSUS   ASTRONOMY.  381 

—  "Is  yonder  planet  inhabited  by  rational,  accountable 
creatures,  or  no  ?  "  Now,  nothing  can  be  more  clear  than 
that,  reasoning  on  Sir  Isaac's  and  Sir  David's  premises, 
the  reply  would  be  given  in  each  instance  in  the  affirma- 
tive. It  would  be  seen  by  the  reasoning  creature  that  tht 
distant  earth-planet  was  lighted  up  and  heated  by  the 
great  central  furnace  and  lamp,  the  sun ;  that  it  had  its 
clouds,  and  therefore  its  atmosphere ;  that  it  had  its  grate- 
ful interchange  of  day  and  night,  of  summer  and  winter, 
autumn  and  spring ;  and,  further,  that  it  had  its  attendant 
moon,  to  stir  up  its  seas  with  purifying  tides,  and  to  light 
up  its  nights.  And  yet  most  probable  it  is  that  the  first 
hundred  answers  to  the  query  —  those  which  related  to 
the  existence  of  mere  animal  being  —  would  have  been 
false  ones ;  and  most  certain  it  is  that  the  next  two  hun- 
dred answers  to  the  query  —  those  which  I'elated  to  the 
existence  of  natural  life  —  would  be  false  also.  Not  until 
after  the  lapse  of  a  million  and  a  half  of  years,  when  the 
question  would  come  to  be  put  for  the  three  hundred  and 
first  time,  would  it  elicit  the  true  response.  And  let  us 
remember  that  whatever  was  may  be ;  and  that  what  were 
the  first  states  of  our  own  planet  may  be  the  present  states 
of  the  various  planets  that  revolve  with  it  round  the 
central  furnace  and  lamp.  Here  again  we  cannot  cast  our 
argument  into  an  exact  geometrical  or  arithmetical  shape. 
We  cannot  even  say,  founding  on  the  assumj^tion  of  pro- 
portionate periods  already  given,  that  as  our  earth  was  for 
three  hundred  periods  of  five  thousand  years  each  without 
rational  inhabitants,  and  possessed  of  such  an  inhabitant 
during  only  the  three  hundred  and  first  period  of  that 
length,  so  it  is  probable  that  of  three  hundred  and  one 
contemporary  planets  only  one  is  a  scene  of  rational  ex- 
istence, and  the  others  either  not  inhabited  at  all,  or  in- 
habited by  but  sentient  irrationality.  We  cannot  give  the 
argument  any  such  exact  form,  seeing  that  an  unreckoned 
but  possible,  nay,  probable  element,  comes  in  to  destroy 
its  tjxactitude.     The  other  planets  may,  nay,  in  all  likeli- 


382  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

hood,  have  biien  ripening  as  cei'tainly  as  our  own,  and  the 
period  of  rational  inhabitancy  may  have  arrived  in  not  a 
few  of  them.  Quite  as  perilous,  however,  would  it  be  to 
argue  from  the  particular  analogy  furnished  by  the  history 
of  the  earth,  that  ^11,  or  even  the  greater  part  of  them,  had 
so  ripened.  Why,  even  the  fruit  of  one  season,  whether 
apples  or  apricots,  does  not  all  ripen  at  the  same  time  on 
the  same  tree ;  far  less  do  the  fruits  of  different  trees  ripen 
at  the  same  time.  And  we  are  sufficiently  acquainted 
with  the  planets  to  know  that,  with  certain  general  resem- 
blances, they  are  very  different  fruit  indeed  from  our  own 
earth.  Even  supposing  Jupiter,  for  instance,  to  be  in 
every  respect  save  size  a  second  earth  (which,  by  the  way, 
demonstrably  he  is  not),  he  would  take,  on  the  soberest 
calculations  of  the  geologist,  many  hundred  times  more 
time  to  ripen  than  our  small  planet.  And  so  may  it  be 
predicted  of  Saturn  and  Uranus,  and  Neptune  also,  and 
most  probably,  from  the  different  circumstances  in  which 
they  are  placed,  of  the  smaller  planets  Mercury  and  Venus. 
But  while  this  geological  question,  in  relation  to  the  pres- 
ent time  of  ripe  or  unripe,  must  be  now  brought  in  to 
qualify  the  reasonings  of  the  astronomer,  let  us  not  forget 
that  these  reasonings  have,  with  reference  to  ultimate  re- 
sults, a  value  as  positive  as  ever.  From  the  crustaceous 
eyes  of  many  facets  that  existed  during  the  times  of  the 
Silurian  period,  and  the  ichthyic  eyes  of  but  one  facet  or 
capsule  that  existed  during  the  times  of  the  Old  Red  Sand- 
stone, the  geologist  infers  that  during  these  periods  there 
existed  light ;  while  the  astronomer,  taking  up  the  con- 
verse of  the  argument,  infers  that  where  there  is  light 
(joined,  of  course,  to  the  other  necessary  conditions  of  life, 
such  as  planetary  matter  existing  in  the  twofold  form  of 
solid  nucleus  and  surrounding  atmosphere)  there  must  be 
eyes,  —  eyes,  therefore  light,  solar  or  lunar,  etc.,  —  light, 
solar  or  lunar,  therefore  eyes.  And  just  as  the  geologic 
argument  is  noways  invalidated  by.  the  fact  that  there 
are  animals  in  the  foetal  state  furnished  with  eyes  darkly 


GEOLOGY   VERSUS   ASTRONOMY.  383 

veiled  in  the  womb,  for  which  light  does  not  yet  exist,  it 
m  no  degree  invalidates  the  astronomical  argument  that 
there  have  been,  and  most  probably  now  are,  foetal  planets 
furnished  with  light,  solar  or  lunar,  for  which  eyes  do  not 
yet  exist.  Such,  in  this  controversy,  seems  to  be  the  due 
balance  and  adjustment  of  the  opj^osite  arguments,  —  as- 
tronomic and  geologic  arguments  that  modify,  but  in  no 
degree  destroy,  each  other. 

We  can  of  course  do  little  more,  within  the  limits  of  a 
single  article,  than  just  touch  at  a  few  points,  on  a  subject 
upon  which  men  such  as  Sir  David  Brewster,  and,  shall  we 
say.  Professor  Whewell,  fill  each  a  volume  apiece.  Let  us, 
however,  submit  to  them,  as  very  admirable,  both  in  form 
and  substance,  the  claims  of  geology,  as  stated  by  the 
English  Professor :  — 

"  Astronomy  claims  a  sort  of  dignity  over  other  sciences,  from  her 
antiquity,  her  certainty,  and  the  vastness  of  her  discoveries.  But  the 
antiquity  of  astronomy  as  a  science  had  no  share  in  such  speculations 
as  we  are  discussing  ;  and  if  it  had  had,  new  truths  are  better  than 
old  conjectures  ;  new  discoveries  must  rectify  old  errors  ;  new  an- 
swers must  remove  old  difficulties.  The  vigorous  youth  of  geology 
makes  her  fearless  of  the  age  of  astronomy.  And  as  to  the  certainly 
of  astronomy,  it  has  just  as  little  to  do  with  these  speculations.  The 
certainty  stops  just  where  these  speculations  begin.  There  may, 
indeed,  be  some  danger  of  delusion  on  this  subject.  Men  have  been 
so  long  accustomed  to  look  upon  astronomical  science  as  the  mother 
of  certainty,  that  they  may  possibly  confound  astronomical  discov- 
eries with  cosmological  conjectures,  though  these  be  slightly  and 
illogically  connected  with  those.  And  then,  as  to  the  vastness  of  as- 
tronomical discoveries,  —  granting  that  character,  inasmuch  as  it  is 
to  a  certain  degree  a  matter  of  measurement,  —  we  must  observe 
that  the  discoveries  of  geology  are  no  less  vast ;  they  extend  through 
time,  as  those  of  astronomy  do  through  space ;  they  carry  us  through 
millions  of  years,  that  is,  of  the  earth's  revolutions,  as  those  of  as- 
tronomy do  through  millions  of  the  earth's  diameter,  or  of  diameters  of 
the  earth's  orbit.  Geology  fills  the  regions  of  duration  with  events,  as 
astronomy  fills  the  regions  of  the  universe  with  objects.  She  carries 
us  backward  by  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  as  astronomy  carries 


884  LITERARY  AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

us  upward  by  the  relation  of  geometry.  As  astronomy  steps  on 
from  point  to  point  of  the  universe  by  a  chain  of  triangles,  so  geology 
steps  from  epoch  to  epoch  of  the  earth's  history  by  a  chain  of  me- 
chanical and  organical  laws.  If  the  one  depends  on  the  axioms  of 
geometry,  the  other  depends  on  the  axioms  of  causation. 

"  So  far,  then,  geology  has  no  need  to  regard  astronomy  as  her 
superior,  and  least  of  all  when  they  apply  themselves  together  to 
speculations  like  these.  But,  in  truth,  in  such  speculations  geology 
has  an  immeasurable  superiority.  She  has  the  command  of  an  im- 
plement in  addition  to  all  that  astronomy  can  use,  and  one,  for  the 
purpose  of  such  speculations,  adapted  far  beyond  any  astronomical 
element  of  discovery.  She  has  for  one  of  her  studies,  —  one  of  her 
means  of  dealing  with  her  problems,  —  the  knowledge  of  life,  animal 
and  vegetable.  Vital  organization  is  a  subject  of  attention  which 
has  in  modern  times  been  forced  upon  her.  It  is  now  one  of  the 
main  pbints  of  her  discipline.  The  geologist  must  study  the  traces 
of  life  in  every  form ;  must  learn  to  decipher  its  faintest  indications 
and  its  fullest  development.  On  the  question,  then,  whether  there 
be  in  this  or  that  quarter  evidence  of  life,  he  can  speak  with  the  con- 
fidence derived  from  familiar  knowledge  ;  while  the  astronomer,  to 
whom  such  studies  are  utterly  foreign,  beause  he  has  no  facts  that 
bear  upon  them,  can  offer  on  such  questions  only  the  loosest  and 
most  arbitrary  conjectures ;  which,  as  we  have  had  to  remark,  have 
been  rebuked  by  eminent  men  as  being  altogether  inconsistent  with 
the  acknowledged  maxims  of  his  science. 

"  When,  therefore,  geology  tells  us  that  the  earth,  which  has  been 
the  seat  of  human  life  for  a  few  thousand  years  only,  has  been  the 
seat  of  animal  life  for  myriads,  it  may  be  millions,  of  years,  she  has 
a  right  to  offer  this  as  an  answer  to  any  difficulty  which  astronomy, 
or  the  readers  of  astronomical  books,  may  suggest,  derived  from  the 
consideration  that  the  earth,  the  seat  of  human  life,  is  but  one  globe 
of  a  few  thousand  miles  in  diameter,  among  millions  of  other  globes 
at  distances  millions  of  times  as  great.  Let  the  difficulty  be  put  in 
any  way  the  objector  pleases.  Is  it  that  it  is  unworthy  of  the  great- 
ness and  majesty  of  God,  according  to  our  conception  of  him,  to 
bestow  such  peculiar  care  on  so  small  a  part  of  his  creation  ?  But 
we  know  from  geology  that  he  has  bestowed  upon  this  .small  part 
of  his  creation  —  mankind  —  this  special  care.  He  has  made  their 
period,  though  only  a  moment  in  the  ages  of  animal  life,  the  only 
period  of  intelligence,  morality,  religion.  If,  then,  to  suppose  that 
he  had  done  this  is  contrary  to  our  conceptions  of  his  greatness  and 


GEOLOGY  VERSUS  ASTRONOMY.         886 

majesty,  it  is  plain  that  our  conceptions  are  erroneous ;  they  have 
taken  a  wrong  direction.  God  has  not  judged  as  to  what  is  worthy 
of  Him  as  we  have  judged.  He  has  found  it  worthy  of  him  to 
bestow  upon  man  his  special  care,  though  he  occupies  so  small  a 
portion  of  time  ;  and  why  not,  then,  although  he  occupies  so  small 
a  portion  of  space  ? 

"  Or  is  the  objection  this,  —  that  if  we  suppose  the  earth  only  to 
be  occupied  by  inhabitants,  all  the  other  globes  of  the  universe  are 
wasted,  —  turned  to  no  purpose  ?  Is  waste  of  this  kind  considered 
as  unsuited  to  the  character  of  the  Creator  ?  But  here  again  wo 
have  the  like  waste  in  the  occupation  of  the  earth.  All  its  previous 
ages,  its  seas,  and  its  continents,  have  been  wasted  upon  mere  brute 
life,  often,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  for  myriads  of  years  upon  the  lowest, 
the  least  conscious  form  of  life,  —  upon  shell-fishes,  crabs,  sponges 
Why,  then,  should  not  the  seas  and  continents  of  other  planets  be 
occupied  at  present  with  a  life  no  higher  than  this,  or  with  no  life  at 
aU?" 


886  LITERARY  AND  SCIENTIFIC. 


IV. 

THE  SPACES  AND  THE  PERIODS. 

/ 

That  vast  development  of  natural  science  which  forma 
a  leading  characteristic  of  the  present  age  gives  an  im- 
portance to  questions  such  as  that  which  it  involves  which 
they  did  not  possess  at  any  former  period  ;  and  must,  we 
doubt  not,  materially  affect  in  the  future  the  entii-e  front 
of  that  ever-fresh  controversy  which  has  been  maintained 
since  the  earliest  ages  of  the  church  around  the  Christian 
evidences.  Let  us  address  ourselves  to  the  present  portion 
of  our  subject,  —  the  great  extent  of  the  geologic  periods, 
through  the  medium  of  a  simple  illustration. 

Let  us  suppose  that  shortly  after  the  arrival  of  the  May- 
flower at  the  shores  of  New  Eugland,  and  just  as  the 
Pilgrim  Fathers  arc  preparing  to  begin  their  labors  among 
the  deep  primeval  forests  which  cover  the  country,  there 
occurs  a  friendly  controversy  between  two  of  the  party 
regarding  the  age  of  these  vast  woods.  All  the  trees  are 
of  kinds  unknown  at  home  ;  and  though  loftier,  many  of 
them,  than  the  great  oaks  of  England,  and  not  a  few  of 
them  not  less  bulky,  it  is  maintained  by  one  of  the  dispu- 
tants that  they  may  yet  have  come  under  very  different 
laws  of  growth,  and  may  not  be  one  twentieth  part  so  old. 
These  hoary  forests,  he  argues,  though  it  would  require 
some  three  or  four  centuries  to  form  such  on  the  eastern 
shores  of  the  Atlantic,  may  on  its  western  shores  be  less 
than  fifty  years  old ;  nay,  not  only  may  the  woods  of  the 
country  be  as  of  yesterday  compared  with  those  of  Eng- 
land, but  even  its  animals  may.  be  of  such  rapid  growth 
that  the  mouse-deer,  though  of  ponderous  bulk  and  size, 
may  be  in  reality  only  a  few  months  old;  and  the  oyster, 


THE  SPACES   A^fD   THE   PERIODS.  887 

wliich  on  the  English  beds  takes  from  five  to  seven  years, 
as  sliown  by  its  annual  shoots,  to  be  fit  for  market,  may  ia 
the  greatly  larger  American  species  be  equally  mature  in 
as  many  weeks.  The  disputant  contends  —  and  at  this 
stage  of  the  controversy  contends  truly  —  that  they  are 
furnished  with  no  correct  7inU  by  which  to  measure  the 
ago  of  either  the  unknown  plants  or  unfamiliar  animals  of 
the  new  country.  Let  us  yet  farther  suppose  that  in  the 
immediate  neighborhood  of  the  infant  settlement  there  is 
a  small  lake,  which  the  settlers  find  it  necessary  for  sani- 
tary purposes  to  drain,  and  that  they  cut  through,  in  the 
work,  one  of  those  deep  mosses  of  northern  America  in 
which  the  gigantic  bones,  and  not  unfrequently  the  entire 
skeletons,  of  the  mastodon  occur.  Let  us  suppose  that 
they  first  cut  through  several  yards  of  solid  peat ;  that 
they  then  reach  a  tier  of  rather  small  tree-stumps  sticking 
in  the  soil ;  that  a  second  tier  of  somewhat  larger  tree- 
stumps  lies  beneath ;  that  they  then  reach  a  third  tier  of 
still  larger  stumps;  that  under  the  stratum  of  earth  which 
underlies  these  they  find  a  thick  bed  of  marl  composed 
chiefly  of  very  minute  shells ;  and  that  embedded  in  the 
marl  they  find  the  skeleton  of  a  mastodon.  Judging  from 
data  furnished  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  Atlantic,  the 
Pilgrim  who  has  been  asserting,  in  opposition  to  his  neigh- 
bor, the  antiquity  of  the  American  woods,  argues  from 
these  appearances  that  the  moss  deposit  must  be  of  great 
age,  and  the  undeilying  skeleton  of  an  age  greater  still. 
Mosses  in  Old  England,  containing  three  tiers  of  stumps, 
are  demonstrably  as  old  as  the  times  of  the  Roman  inva- 
sion. Even  the  Roman  axe  has  in  some  instances  been 
found  sticking  in  the  lower  trunks  ;  and  at  least  the  huge 
unknown  skeleton  just  found  in  the  moss  must,  he  urges, 
be  quite  as  ancient  as  the  times  of  Agricola  or  Julius  Caesar. 
His  antagonist,  however,  challenges  the  inference.  The 
previous  question  has,  he  asserts,  first  to  be  settled.  The 
rate  of  growth  of  the  American  wood  and  the  American 
shells  has  to  be  determined  ere  any  calculation  can  be 


888  LITERART  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

founded  on  either  the  three  tiers  of  stumps  or  the  over- 
lying or  intervening  deposits  of  vegetable  matter,  or  yet 
on  the  thickness  of  the  shell-marl  which  underlies  the 
whole.  For  if,  as  he  contends,  the  growth  of  animals  and 
vegetables  be,  as  is  possible,  very  rapid  in  the  new  world, 
the  moss  and  shells,  instead  of  being  at  least  sixteen  or 
seventeen  hundred  years  old,  may  not  be  above  sixty  or 
seventy  years  old,  and  the  huge  animal  beneath  may  have 
been  living  only  eighty  or  a  hundred  years  ago.  At  length, 
however,  the  required  unit  of  measurement  turns  up.  In 
cutting  a  tree  for  the  erection  of  his  hut,  the  Pilgrim  who 
maintains  the  opposite  side  of  the  argument  finds  it  strongly 
marked  by  the  annual  rings.  And  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  rings  are  annual  ones.  Between  the  tropics,  when 
rings  occur  at  all,  they  may  indicate  the  checks  given  to 
vegetation  by  the  dry  seasons  ;  and  as  the  year  has  in 
certain  localities  two  of  these,  each  twelvemonth  may  be 
represented  in  the  tree,  not  by  one,  but  by  two  rings. 
But  in  the  latitude  of  New  England,  where  winter  presses 
his  iron  signet  on  the  soil  with  much  firmness,  one  strongly- 
marked  ring  represents  the  year;  and  so,  if  it  be  found 
that  a  tree  of  some  eighteen  or  twenty  inches  in  diameter 
has  its  hundred  concentric  rings,  it  may  be  safely  predicated 
that  it  has  stood  its  century.  And  such,  in  the  supposed 
case,  is  the  inference  of  the  Pilgrim.  He  has  at  length 
got  a  unit,  in  reality  fixed  by  the  great,  never-varying 
astronomic  movements  which  give  to  the  world  its  seed- 
time and  its  winter;  and  finding,  as  he  cuts  tree  after  tree, 
the  same  evidence  repeated,  —  ring  answering  to  ring,  here 
larger  and  there  smaller,  but  in  their  average  proportions 
corresponding  with  those  of  the  English  woods,  —  he  is 
constrained  definitively  to  conclude  that  the  trees  of  the 
new  country  grow  as  slowly,  or  nearly  so,  as  those  of  the 
old  one ;  and  he  confidently  challenges  his  antagonist  to 
test  the  data  on  which  he  founds.  Nor  can  he  hold  that 
his  newly-found  unit,  though,  strictly  speaking,  only  a 
measure  of  the  age  of  the  various  forest  trees  in  which  it 


THE   SPACES   AND   THE  PERIODS.  389 

occurs,  lias  bearing  only  on  them.  If  trees  grow  as  slowly 
in  the  new  country  as  in  the  old,  can  he  rationally  hold  that 
its  other  classes  of  vegetables  —  its  ferns,  equisetacae,  club- 
mosses,  grasses,  and  herbaceous  plants  generally  —  grow 
much  faster  than  their  cogeners  at  home  ?  Further,  though 
his  unit  does  not  enable  him  to  measure  exactly  the  age 
by  the  mossy  deposit,  with  its  three  tiers  of  stumps  and 
its  underlying  mastodon,  it  at  least  enables  him  to  deter- 
mine that  it  must  be  very  old.  It  gives  him  in  succession 
the  age  of  each  tier  ;  and  when  he  infers  respecting  the 
intervening  and  overlying  deposits  of  vegetable  matter, 
that,  as  the  trees  grow  slowly,  the  deposits  must  have  been 
formed  correspondingly  slow  in  about  the  average  ratio  of 
similar  formations  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  it  jus- 
tifies the  inference ;  nay,  it  is  not  without  its  bearing  on 
the  probable  growth  of  the  animals  of  the  countiy  also. 
It  would  be  utterly  wild  to  hold  that  in  a  country  in  which 
an  ordinary-sized  pine  was  the  slow  growth  of  a  century, 
a  mouse-deer  or  a  grizzly  bear  shot  up  to  its  full  size  in  a 
few  weeks  or  months.  And  if  in  the  foliaceous  shells  of 
the  coast,  such  as  its  oysters,  he  finds  exactly  such  layers 
of  growth,  or  shoots^  as  those  from  which  the  oyster-fisher 
at  home  computes  the  age  of  the  animals,  each  ^'■shoot''^ 
being  the  work  of  a  year,  can  he  avoid  the  conclusion  that 
here  also  he  has  got  a  unit  by  which  to  measure  the  time 
during  which  the  organisms  have  lived,  and  from  which 
he  may  conclude,  in  all  sobriety,  that  if  the  bed  of  shell- 
marl  which  contains  the  remains  of  the  mastodon  be  very 
thick,  it  must  of  necessity  be  very  old  ?  If  he  cannot,  in 
strictness,  apply  his  units  to  every  plant  or  every  shell,  or 
yet  to  every  deposit  of  vegetable  or  animal  origin,  they  at 
least  tell  him  that  the  same  general  laws  of  growth  obtain 
on  the  one  side  of  the  Atlantic  as  on  the  other,  and  warn 
him  against  inferring,  like  his  antagonist,  that  the  cases  in 
which  he  has  not  yet  been  able  to  apply  them  are  in  any 
degree  anomalous,  or  under  laws  that  are  different. 

We  have  but  to  apply  to  the  geological  periods  of  at 
33* 


390  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

least  the  Secondary  and  Tertiary  divisions  the  reasoning 
of  our  illustration  here,  in  order  to  determine  that  they 
must  have  been  immensely  prolonged.  In  no  degree  is 
the  argument  more  affected  by  the  portion  of  time  which 
separates  our  age  from  the  ages  of  the  Oolite,  than  by  the 
portion  of  space  which  separates  our  country  from  the 
eastern  shores  of  America.  In  the  woods  of  the  great 
palaeozoic  division  the  lines  of  growth  are  uncertain  and 
capricious.  Many  of  the  trees  furnish  no  trace  of  them 
whatever,  just  as  there  are  recent  intertropical  trees  in 
which  they  do  not  occur ;  and  in  some  of  the  others  they 
appear  capriciously  and  irregularly,  as  in  those  intertropical 
trees  in  which  the  growth  is  checked  from  time  to  time  by 
intense  heats  and  occasional  droughts.  But  in  the  woods 
of  the  Lias  and  Oolite  winter  has  set  his  seal;  the  annual 
rings  of  Pence  JElggensis  and  Pence  Lindleiana  are  as 
regularly  and  strongly  marked  as  those  of  the  Scotch  fir 
or  Swiss  pine ;  nor,  be  it  added,  are  they  of  larger  size.  In 
one  specimen  of  our  collection,  but  in  one  only,  the  rings 
average  nearly  a  quarter  of  an  inch  in  breadth ;  the  ti*eo 
added  in  a  single  twelvemonth  almost  half  an  inch  to  its 
diameter ;  but  the  specimen  is  an  exceptional  one.  In  the 
others  they  average  from  about  a  line  to  an  eighth  part ; 
and  in  one  specimen  no  fewer  than  twenty-eight  rings 
occur  in  the  space  of  an  inch.  The  slow-growing  tree,  of 
which  "it  formed  a  portion,  —  sluggish  in  its  progress  as  a 
Norwegian  pine  on  some  exposed  mountain-side,  —  added 
only  half  an  inch  to  its  diameter  in  seven  years.  The  unit 
here  tells  certainly  of  no  rapid  development  of  life,  but, 
on  the  contrary,  of  a  development  quite  as  tardy  as  that 
of  the  present  age  of  the  world  in  latitudes  as  high  as 
our  own;  and,  though  we  cannot  decide  with  the  same 
certainty  respecting  the  rate  of  growth  in  the  animals 
contemporary  with  those  trees,  we  may  surely  most  natu- 
rally infer  that  ostrea  of  some  ten  or  twelve  layers,  or 
gryphites  (extinct  members  of  the  same  family)  of  some 
fifteen  or  twenty,  could  not  have  been  very  young ;  that 


THE   SPACES  AND   THE  PERIODS.  391 

88  the  ammonite,  though  thinly  walled,  was  as  solid  in  its 
substance  as  the  nautilus,  and  had  a  great  many  more 
chambers,  which  were  added  to  it  peacemeal,  one  at  a  time, 
it  could  not  have  been  of  much  quicker  growth ;  and  that, 
as  the  internal  shell  of  the  belemnite  was  much  more  pon- 
derous than  that  of  its  successor  the  cuttle-fish,  it  must 
have  attained  to  maturity  quite  as  slowly.  Further,  not 
only  can  it  be  demonstrated  that  ivory  teeth  were  every 
whit  as  dense  in  those  ages  as  they  are  now,  —  a  remark 
that  applies  equally  to  the  later  palaeozoic  periods, — but 
it  can  be  shown  also  that  some  of  these  teeth  were  as 
sorely  worn  as  in  existing  animals  when  very  old.  In 
short,  the  evidence  that  life,  animal  and  vegetable,  existed 
on  the  further  side  of  the  Tertiary  geologic  periods  under 
the  same  laws  as  now,  is  as  conclusive  as  that  it  exists 
under  the  same  laws  on  the  further  side  of  the  Atlantic, 
And  these  laws  cast  much  light,  as  in  the  case  of  the  peat- 
moss of  our  illustration,  on  the  rate  at  which  many  of  the 
mechanical  deposits  must  have  gone  on.  The  Lias  of 
Eathie,  for  instance,  consist,  for  about  four  hundred  feet  in 
vertical  extent,  of  an  almost  impalpable  shale,  divided  into 
layers  scarce  thicker  than  pasteboard.  It  might  well  be 
predicated,  from  the  merely  mechanical  character  of  the 
deposit,  that  its  formation  could  not  have  been  rapid.  But 
how  greatly  is  the  argument  for  the  lapse  of  a  vast  period 
of  time  for  its  growth  strengthened  by  the  flict  that  each 
one  of  these  many  thousand  layers  formed  a  crowded 
platform  of  animal  life,  and  that  so  thickly  are  they  covered 
with  the  remains  of  not  only  free  shells,  such  as  ammonites, 
but  also  of  sedentary  shells,  such  as  the  ostrea,  that  the 
organisms  of  but  two  of  the  more  crowded  platforms  could 
not  find  room  on  a  single  one!  And  these  shells  were  the 
contemporaries  of  slow-growing  pines,  that  on  the  average 
increased  in  diameter  little  more  than  the  fifth  of  an  inch 
yearly. 

Nor,  though  we  lack  the  regulating  unit,  is  the  evidence 
of  the  lapse  of  vast  periods  during  the  deposition  of  the 


892  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

palaeozoic  systems  much  less  complete.  The  oldest  wood 
that  presents  its  structure  to  the  microscope  —  a  fossil  of 
the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone  —  exhibits  no  annual  rings; 
but  it  presents  as  dense  a  structure  as  the  Norfolk  Island 
pine.  The  huge  araucarian  of  Granton  has  a  structure 
nearly  as  dense.  We  have  already  incidentally  referred  to 
the  solid  ivory  and  much-worn  teeth  of  the  reptile  fishes 
of  the  Coal  Measures.  In  the  Mid-Lothian  basin  there  are 
thirty  seams  of  workable  coal  intercalated  among  deposits 
of  various  character,  whose  united  thickness  amounts  to 
nearly  three  thousand  feet,  and  under  most  of  these  seams 
the  original  soil  may  still  be  detected  on  which  the  plants 
that  formed  their  coal  flourished  and  decayed.  Whole 
beds  of  the  Mountain  Limestone  are  composed  almost 
exclusively  of  marine  shells  and  the  stems  of  lily  encrinites. 
In  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  there  are  three  different  form- 
ations abounding  in  fishes ;  and  yet,  so  far  as  is  yet  known, 
there  is  not  a  single  species  of  fish  common  to  any  two  of 
them.  Apd  who  shall  tell  us  that  the  life-term  of  a  crea- 
tion is  a  brief  period  ?  In  the  Upper  Silurian  system  we 
have  examined  a  deposit  more  than  fifty  feet  thick,  every 
fragment  of  which  had  once  been  united  to  animal  life, 
crustaceous,  molluscan,  or  radiated.  And  how  wonderfully, 
too,  the  further  geologists  explore,  and  the  more  carefully 
they  examine,  are  their  formations  found  to  expand  1 
Phillips  estimated  the  thickness  of  the  Coal  Measures  at 
ten  thousand  feet.  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  in  one  of  his  recent 
visits  to  America,  found  that  the  Coal  Measures  of  Nova 
Scotia  had  a  thickness  of  more  than  fourteen  thousand  six 
hundred  feet.  Phillips  estimated  all  the  deposits  beneath 
ths  Old  Red  Sandstone  at  twenty  thousand  feet.  The 
geologists  of  the  Government  survey  find  that  the  Silurians 
alone  amount  to  about  thirty  thousand  feet;  and  under 
these,  in  Scotland  at  least,  lie  the  clay-slates,  the  mica- 
schists,  and  the  enormous  deposits  of  the  gneisses.  Ou 
the  Continent,  the  remains  of  whole  creations  have  been 
found  intercalated  between  what  had  been  deemed  con- 


THE   SPACES   AND   THE  PERIODS.  393 

tiguous  systems.  An  entire  system,  the  Permian,  has 
been  detected  between  the  Coal  Measures  and  the  Trias ; 
and  that  shell-deposit  that  extends  between  the  Gironde 
and  the  Pyrenees,  once  regarded  as  of  the  same  age  with 
the  Coraline  Crag,  has  yielded  seven  hundred  species 
of  shells  —  nearly  twice  the  number  of  all  the  species 
found  on  the  coasts  of  Britain  —  that  belong  neither  to 
the  Crag  nor  to  the  older  Eocene.  It  is  yet  another 
creation  that  has  appeared,  for  which  fitting  space  must 
be  found  in  the  record.  The  more  thoroughly  the  field- 
geologist  examines,  the  larger  become  his  demands  on  the 
eternity  of  the  past  for  periods  which  it  is  certainly  very 
competent  to  supply.  His  sibyl  ever  returns  upon  him ; 
but,  unlike  her  of  old,  it  is  with  an  increased,  not  a  dimin- 
ished store  of  volumes ;  and  she  ever  demands  for  them 
a  larger  and  yet  larger  price. 

And  why  should  the  tale  of  years  be  refused  her?  Let 
year  be  heaped  upon  year,  until  the  numerals  that  repre- 
sent them,  consisting  all  of  nines,  would  extend  in  a  close 
line  from  the  sun  to  the  planet  Neptune,  and  they  would 
still  form  but  an  inappreciable  item  in  the  lifetime  of  the 
Creator.  We  see  nothing  to  regret  in  the  truth,  destined 
to  become  greatly  more  evident  in  the  future  than  it  is 
now,  that  there  is  nothing  in  all  history,  or  in  all  creation, 
vast  enough  to  be  measured  off  against  the  periods  of  the 
geologist,  save  the  spaces  of  the  astronomer;  or  that,  with 
relation  to  at  least  our  own  planet,  rational  existence  is 
still  in  its  immature  infancy.  Could  we  wish  it  to  be 
otherwise  ?  The  world  is  still  sowing  its  wild  oats ;  and, 
though  somewhat  better,  on  the  whole,  than  it  has  been, 
there  is  surely  nothing  in  its  present  aspect  to  reconcile  any 
one  to  the  belief  that  it  has  attained  to  its  ultimate  devel- 
opment. Its  present  most  prominent  features,  if  we  may 
so  express  ourselves,  are  the  horrible  sufferings  of  war  and 
the  lies  of  stock-jobbers. 


394  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTTFIC. 


V. 

UNITY  OF  THE  HUMAN  EAGES.^ 

There  are  certain  typical  forms  of  error  that  never  die, 
though  their  details  alter,  and  the  facts  and  analogies  on 
which  they  purport  to  be  based  vary  with  the  increase  of 
knowledge  and  the  progress  of  the  human  mind.  And  it 
is  of  great  importance  that  these  should  be  studied,  not 
only  in  their  essential,  and.  if  we  may  so  express  ourselves, 
generic  character,  but  also  historically,  in  the  various  mod- 
ifications of  shape  and  color  which  have  marked  them  at 
their  several  periods  of  revival,  and  which  will  almost  al- 
ways be  found  to  depend  on  some  peculiarity  of  pursuit 
or  opinion  prevalent  at  the  time,  or,  if  connected  with  the 
physical  sciences,  on  some  newly-opened  course  of  discov- 
ery. The  various  species  of  error  once  thoroughly  mas- 
tered, the  student  will  find  ever  after  that  it  is  with  but 
its  varieties  he  has  to  deal.  Nay,  by  thoroughly  knowing 
the  species^  and  the  history  of  the  changes  through  which 
they  passed  at  their  several  appearances,  he  may  be  able 
to  anticipate  the  exact  course  which  they  would  have  to 
run  should  they  reappear  in  his  own  times,  when  men 
woree  taught,  and  unacquainted  with  this  cycloidal  char- 
acter of  error,  will  neither  know  whence  they  come  nor 
whither  they  are  going.  The  native  sagacity  of  the  late 
Dr.  M'Crie  was  greatly  sharpened  by  a  knowledge  of  this 
kind,  derived  from  his  profound  acquaintance  with  church 
history ;  and  he  is  said  to  have  predicted,  while  Rowism  was 


1  The  Unity  of  the  Human  Races  proved  to  be  the  Doctrine  of  Scripture, 
Eeason,  Science,  etc.  By  the  Rev.  Thomas  Smyth,  D.D.,  Member  of  the  Amer 
loan  Association  for  the  Advancemeut  of  Science. 


UNITY  OP  THE  HUMAN  RACES.  395 

yet  a  howling  enthusiasm,  gibbering  the  untranslatable 
tongues,  and  stretching  forth  its  hand  to  work  miracles, 
that  it  was  to  end  at  no  very  remote  period  as  a  decrepit 
superstition.  The  fluttering  butterfly  was  destined,  agree- 
ably to  its  previously-determined  constitution,  to  produce 
a  brood  of  creeping  caterpillars,  though  only  the  laborious 
student  who  had  acquainted  himself  with  its  specific  char- 
acter, as  exhibited  in  former  manifestations,  knew  that 
such  was  to  be  the  case.  This  perception  of  the  specific 
essentials  and  consequents  of  both  truth  and  error  consti- 
tute"., too,  at  once  the  charm  and  the  value  of  such  a  mas- 
tery over  the  controversies  which  have  arisen  within  the 
church,  or  in  which,  in  self-defence,  the  church  has  been 
compelled  to  engage,  as  that  possessed  by  the  Principal  of 
our  Free  Church  College,  Dr.  Cunningham  ;  and  there  are 
not  a  few  opposed  to  college  extension  on  the  principle 
that,  even  in  the  Fi"ee  Church,  Professors  of  Church  History 
of  similar  calibre  and  acquirement  are  not  to  be  had  in 
every  district  of  country,  and  that  yet  such  are  impera- 
tively demanded  by  the  emergencies  of  the  time.  To  dis- 
tinguish between  the  permanent  forms  and  the  accidental 
circumstances,  —  between  the  ever-recurring  cycloidal  types 
and  those  mere  varieties  which  belong  to  but  one  phase  or 
period  in  the  appearance  of  these,  —  must  ever  form  no 
inconsiderable  porlion  of  the  science  of  ecclesiastical  his- 
tory. Nay,  save  for  this  tendency  in  the  typical  forms  of 
error  to  return  upon  the  world  altered  in  their  features  but 
unchanged  in  their  framework,  at  least  two  thirds  of  all 
ecclesiastical  history  would  be  but  a  profitless  I'ecord  of 
the  nonsense  and  erx-ors  of  the  past ;  and  the  beau  ideal  of 
a  church  history  would  be  a  work  such  as  that  of  Milner, 
which  is  little  else  than  a  record  of  the  better  thoughts 
and  deeds  of  Christian  men  chronologically  arranged,  and 
useless  for  the  most  important  ends  served  by  ecclesiasti- 
cal history  of  the  better  type.  It  sounds  no  note  of  warn- 
ing, and  furnishes  no  armor  of  defence,  against  the  cycloi. 
dal  errors. 


396  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

There  are  two  of  these  returning  errors  of  a  diametri- 
cally opposite  character,  which  arise  out  of  natural  science, 
and  of  which  the  last  century  has  seen  several  revivals, 
and  the  centuries  to  come  must  witness  many  more.  The 
one  —  that  of  Maillet  and  Lamarck  —  sees  no  impassable 
line  between  species,  or  even  genera,  families,  and  classes, 
and  so  holds  that  all  animals  —  the  human  race  as  certainly 
as  the  others  —  may  have  commenced  in  the  lowest  forms, 
and  developed  during  the  course  of  ages  to  what  they  now 
are.  The  other  —  that  of  Karnes  and  Voltaire — recog- 
nizes in  even  the  varieties  of  the  species  impassable  lines, 
and  holds,  in  consequence,  that  the  human  race  cannot 
have  sprung  from  a  single  pair.  And  both  beliefs  are  as 
incompatible  with  the  fundamental  truths  of  revelation  as 
they  are  with  one  another.  The  Lamarckian  form  of  error 
has  been  laid  on  the  shelf  for  a  time  ;  nor  will  it  be  very 
efficiently  revived  until  some  new  accumulation  of  fact, 
gleaned  from  the  yet  unexplored  portions  of  the  geologic 
field,  or  the  obscurer  fields  of  natural  history,  and  preg- 
nant with  those  analogical  resemblances  between  the  coursBv 
of  creation  and  the  progress  of  embryology  with  which 
nature  is  full,  will  give  it  new  footing,  by  associating  it 
with  novel  and  interesting  truth.  The  antagonist  error  is 
at  present  all  alive  and  active  in  America,  where  it  has 
been  espoused  by  naturalists  of  high  name  and  standing ; 
and  it  has  already  produced  volumes  of  controversy.  Nor 
is  there  a  country  in  the  world  where,  from  purely  politi- 
cal causes,  there  must  exist  a  predisposition  equally  strong 
to  receive  as  true  the  hypothesis  of  Voltaire.  The  exist- 
ence of  slavery  in  the  Southern  States,  and  the  strong 
dislike  with  which  the  black  population  are  regarded  by 
the  whites  throughout  the  country  generally,  must  dispose 
the  men  who  hate  or  enslave  them  to  receive  with  favor 
whatever  plausibilities  go  to  show  that  they  are  not  of  one 
blood  with  themselves,  and  that  they  owe  to  them  none 
of  the  duties  of  brotherhood.  We  have  perused  with  in- 
terest and  instruction  a  very  learned  and  able  volume  on 


UNITY  OF  THE  HUMAN  RACES.  897 

this  subject  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Thomas  Smyth  of  Charleston, 
one  of  the  most  accomplished  Presbyterian  ministers  of 
the  United  States,  with  whose  works  on  the  "  Apostolical 
Succession"  and  the  "  Claims  of  the  Free  Church  of  Scot- 
land "  many  of  our  readers  must  be  already  acquainted, 
and  who,  though  residing  in  the  centre  of  a  slave  district, 
and  exposed  to  much  odium  on  the  part  of  the  abolitionists, 
has  been  the  first  to  come  forward  in  this  controversy  to 
assert  in  behalf  of  the  black  man  the  "  unity  of  the  human 
races,"  and  that  all  men  have  fallen  in  one  common  father, 
the  first  Adam,  "  created  a  living  soul,"  and  that  there  is 
salvation  to  all  in  one  common  Saviour,  the  "  last  Adam," 
"  made  a  quickening  Spirit."  Much  of  the  volume  is  taken 
up  in  dealing  with  the  question  in  its  older  form.  Vol- 
taire held  that  there  were  "  as  well-marked  species  of  men 
as  of  apes."  Kames  was  more  unhappy  in  his  illustration. 
"  If  the  only  rule  afibrded  by  nature  for  classing  animals 
can  be  depended  upon,"  we  find  him  saying,  "  there  are 
different  species  of  men  as  well  as  of  dogs.^^  Gibbon, 
though  his  remark  on  the  subject  takes  the  characteristic 
form  of  an  ironical  sneer,  in  which  he  says  the  contrary 
of  what  he  means,  deemed  it  more  natural  to  hold  that 
the  various  races  of  men  originated  in  those  tracts  of  the 
globe  which  they  inhabit,  than  that  they  had  all  proceeded 
from  a  common  centre  and  a  single  pair  of  progenitors. 
To  the  view,  however,  taken  by  these  distinguished  scep- 
tics,—  men  eminent  in  the  literary  world,  but  of  little 
weight  in  that  of  science,  —  all  the  greater  naturalists  of 
tlie  last  century  were  opposed.  Kames,  in  the  chapter  of 
his  "  Sketches  "  specially  devoted  to  the  question,  had  to 
combat  both  Linnaeus  and  Buffon  ;  and  the  later  natural- 
ists who  have  specially  concentrated  themselves  on  the 
subject,  such  as  Pritchard,  Bachman,  and  Lawrence,  have 
irrofragably  shown  that,  tried  by  the  marks  which  are  re- 
garded as  constituting  specific  differences  among  the  lower 
animals,  the  family  of  man  consists  of  but  one  species 
But  the  question  raised  in  the  modern  form,  without  dia- 
34 


808  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

puting  this  conclusion,  eludes  it  by  a  new  statement ;  and 
we  could  fain  wish  that  Dr.  Smyth  had  devoted  a  larger 
I)ortion  of  his  valuable  volume  to  the  controversy  in  its 
new  phase.  The  fact  is,  while  in  its  old  form  the  greater 
naturalists  were  on  the  side  of  the  orthodox  theologian, 
some  very  distinguished  naturalists  take  in  its  new  form 
the  opposite  side.  The  difference  in  the  statement  may 
be  summed  up  in  a  few  words.  It  was  held  by  Voltaire 
and  his  coadjutors  that  there  are  several  species  of  men, 
who  must  of  necessity  have  originated  from  several  pairs  ; 
whereas,  what  is  held  by  Professor  Agassiz  and  several  of 
the  American  naturalists  is,  that  though  the  species  be 
proi)crly  but  one,  it  is  according  to  the  known  analogies 
both  of  i)laiits  and  animals  that  it  should  have  originated 
in  various  centres,  —  a  conclusion  which  the  strongly- 
marked  varieties  of  the  race  which  occur  in  certain  well- 
defined  geographic  areas  serve,  it  is  held,  to  substantiate, 
or  at  least  to  render  the  most  probable. 

It  will  be  seen  that  against  this  restatement  of  the 
question  many  of  the  old  facts  and  arguments  do  not  bear. 
Theologically,  however,  —  in  every  instance  in  which  it 
assumes  the  positive  form,  and  in  which,  building  on  its 
presumed  analogies,  and  the  extreme  character  and  remote 
appearance  of  the  several  varieties  of  the  species  to  which 
it  points,  it  asserts  that  the  beginnings  of  the  race  must 
be  diverse,  and  its  Adams  and  ^ves  many,  —  it  is  in  effect 
the  same.  On  the  consequences  of  the  result  it  can  be 
scarce  necessary  to  insist.  The  second  Adam  died  for  but 
the  descendants  of  the  first.  Nay,  so  thoroughly  is  reve- 
lation pledged  to  the  unity  of  the  species?,  that  if  all  nations 
be  not  "  made  of  one  blood,"  there  is,  in  the  theological 
sense,  neither  first  nor  second  "Adam;"  "Christ,"  accord- 
ing to  the  apostle,  "  hath  not  risen ; "  conversion  is  an 
idle  fiction ;  and  all  men  are  yet  in  their  sins.  Further, 
that  kind  of  brotherhood  which  unites  the  species  by  those 
ties  of  neighborhood  illustrated  by  our  Saviour  is  broken  ; 
and  there  are  races  of  men  reckoned  up  by  millions  and 


UNITY   OF  THE  HUMAN  RACES.  899 

tens  of  millions  in  which  we  may  recognize  our  slaves  and 
victims,  but  not  our  brothers  and  neighbors.  Nay,  why 
should  we  res})ect  the  life  of  creatures  not  of  our  own 
blood  ?  Bill  Sykes  tells  Fagin  the  Jew,  in  "  Oliver  Twist," 
that  he  wished  he  was  his  dog;  "for,"  said  he,  "the  gov- 
ernment that  cares  for  the  lives  of  men  like  you  lets  a 
man  kill  a  dog  how  he  likes."  But  if  these  tribes  be  men 
not  of  our  own  blood,  —  men  who  did  not  spring  from  the 
same  source  with  ourselves,  and  for  whom  therefore  Chris- 
tianity can  make  no  provision,  —  why  the  distinction  ?  It 
is  only  to  those  whom  we  believe  to  be  of  our  own  blood 
that  the  distinction  extends.  It  is  as  lawful  to  shoot  an 
orang-outang  or  a  chimpanzee  as  a  dog  or  a  cat ;  and 
with  but  mere  expediency  to  regulate  the  matter,  it  might 
become  quite  as  necessary  to  hunt  down  and  destroy  wild 
men  as  to  hunt  down  and  destroy  wild  dogs.  Nay,  we 
are  not  sure  whether  a  somewhat  mysterious  admission  to 
this  effect  may  not  be  found  in  a  passage  quoted  by  Dr. 
Smyth  from  the  writings  of  one  of  the  American  assertors 
of  the  diversity  of  races.  Dr.  Nott.  "The  time  must 
come,"  says  this  latter  gentleman,  "  when  the  blacks  will 
be  worse  than  useless  to  us.  What  then  ?  Emancipation 
must  follow,  which,  from  the  lights  before  us,  is  but  an- 
other name  for  extermination^  But  though  the  remark, 
viewed  in  connection  with  such  a  doctrine,  seems  strangely 
ominous,  we  do  not  profess  fully  to  understand  it. 

Within  the  limits  of  a  newspaper  article  —  narrow  for 
such  a  subject  when  amplest  —  we  can  scarce  be  expected 
even  to  indicate  the  line  which  we  think  ought  to  be  taken 
up  in  this  controversy  by  the  churches.  To  the  historic 
evidence  we  find  ample  justice  done  by  Dr.  Smyth;  and 
the  historic  evidence,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is,  be  it  remembered, 
positive^  —  not  merely  inferential.  We  are  less  sure.  Low- 
ever,  of  the  line  specially  adopted  against  Agassiz  in  the 
field  of  natural  history.  The  analogies  may  be  on  the 
side  of  the  naturalist,  as  he  says  they  are,  and  he  may  be 
quite  right  in  holding  that  varieties  of  the  race  so  extreme 


400  LTTERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

as  that  of  the  negro  on  the  one  side,  and  the  blue-eyed, 
fair-haired,  diaphanous  Goth  on  the  other,  could  not  have 
originated  naturally  in  a  species  possessed  of  a  common 
origin  during  the  brief  period  limited  by  authentic  history 
on  the  one  hand,  and  the  first  beginnings  of  a  family  so 
recent  as  that  of  maJi  on  the  other.  But  though  he  may 
possibly  be  right  as  a  naturalist,  —  though  we  think  that 
matter  admits  of  being  tried,  for  it  is  far  from  settled,  — 
he  may  be  none  the  less  wrong  on  that  account  as  a  the- 
ologian. His  inferences  may  be  right  and  legitimate  in 
themselves,  and  yet  the  main  deduction  founded  upon 
them  be  false  in  fact.  Let  us  illusti'ate.  There  is  nothing 
more  certain  than  that  the  human  species  is  of  compara- 
tively recent  origin.  All  geological  science  testifies  that 
man  is  but  of  yesterday  ;  and  the  profound  yet  exquisitely 
simple  argument  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  as  reported  by  Mr. 
Conduit,  bears  with  singular  efiect  on  the  same  truth. 
Almost  all  the  great  discoveries  and  inventions,  argued 
the  philosopher,  are  of  comparatively  recent  origin.  Per- 
haps the  only  great  invention  or  discovery  that  occurs  in 
the  fabulous  ages  of  history  is  the  invention  of  letters. 
All  the  others  —  such  as  the  mariner's  compass,  printing, 
gunpowder,  the  telescope,  the  discovery  of  the  New  World 
and  Southern  Africa,  and  of  the  true  position  and  relations 
of  the  earth  in  the  solar  system  —  lie  within  the  province 
of  the  authentic  annalist;  which,  man  being  the  inquisi- 
tive, constructive  creature  that  he  is,  would  not  be  the 
case  were  the  species  of  any  very  high  antiquity.  We 
have  seen,  since  the  death  of  Sir  Isaac,  steam,  gas,  and 
electricity  introduced  as  new  forces  into  the  world ;  tho 
race,  in  consequence,  has  in  less  than  a  century  and  a  half 
grown  greatly  in  knowledge  and  in  power;  and  by  the 
rapid  rate  of  the  increase,  we  argue  with  the  philosopher 
that  it  can  by  no  means  be  very  ancient.  Had  it  been  on 
the  earth  twenty,  fifty,  or  a  hundred  thousand  years  ago, 
Bteara,  itas,  and  electricity  would  have  been  discovered 
hundreds  of  ages  since,  and  it  would  at  this  date  have  no 


UNITY   OF  THE  HUMAN  RACES.  401 

sncli  room  to  grow.  And  the  only  very  ancient  history 
which  has  a  claim  to  be  authentic  —  that  of  Moses  —  con- 
firms, we  find,  the  shrewd  inference  of  Sir  Isaac.  Now, 
with  this  fact  of  the  recent  origin  of  the  race  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  other  fact,  that  the  many  various  languages 
of  the  race  so  differ  that  there  are  some  of  them  which 
have  scarce  a  dozen  words  in  common,  a  linguist  who 
confined  himself  to  the  consideration  of  natural  causes 
would  be  quite  justified  in  arguing  that  these  languages 
could  not  possibly  have  changed  to  be  what  they  are,  from 
any  such  tongue,  in  the  some  five  or  six  thousand  years 
to  which  he  finds  himself  restricted  by  history,  geology, 
and  the  inference  of  Sir  Isaac.  It  takes  many  centuries 
thoroughly  to  change  a  language,  even  in  the  present 
state  of  things,  in  which  divers  languages  exist,  and  in 
which  commerce  and  conquest,  and  the  demands  of  litera- 
ture, are  ever  incorporating  the  vocables  of  one  people 
with  those  of  another.  After  the  lapse  of  nearly  thi'ee 
thousand  years,  the  language  of  modern  Greece  is  essen- 
tially that  in  which  Homer  wrote;  and  by  much  the  larger 
part  of  the  words  in  which  we  ourselves  express  our  ideas 
are  those  which  Alfred  employed  when  he  propounded  his 
scheme  of  legislative  assemblies  and  of  trial  by  jury.  And 
were  there  but  one  language  on  earth,  changes  in  words 
or  structure  would  of  necessity  operate  incalculably  more 
slowly.  Nor  would  it  be  illogical  for  the  linguist  to  argue, 
that  if,  some  five  or  six  thousand  years  ago,  the  race,  then 
in  their  extreme  infancy,  had  not  a  common  language, 
they  could  not  have  originated  as  one  family,  but  as  sev- 
eral, and  so  his  conclusion  would  in  effect  be  that  of  the 
American  naturalist.  But  who  does  not  see  that,  though 
right  as  a  linguist,  he  would  be  wrong  as  a  theologian,  — 
w^rong  in  fact  ?  Reasoning  on  but  the  common  and  the 
natural,  he  would  have  failed  to  take  into  account,  in  his 
calculation,  one  main  element, — the  element  of  miracle, 
as  manifested  in  the  confusion  of  tongues  at  Babel ;  and 
his  ultimate  finding  would,  in  consequence,  be  wholly 
34* 


402  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

erroneous.  Now,  it  is  perhaps  equally  possible  for  the 
naturalist  to  hold  that  two  such  extreme  varieties  of  the 
human  family  as  the  negro  and  the  Goth  could  not  have 
originated  from  common  parents  in  the  course  of  a  few 
centuries;  and  certainly  the  negro  does  appear  in  history 
not  many  centuries  after  the  flood.  He  had  assumed  his 
deep  black  hue  six  hundred  years  before  the  Christian  era, 
when  Jeremiah  used  his  well-known  illustration,  "  Can  the 
Ethiopian,"  etc. ;  and  the  negro  head  and  features  appear 
among  the  sculptures  and  paintings  of  Egypt  several  cen- 
turies earlier.  Nay,  negro  skulls  of  a  very  high  antiquity 
have  been  found  among  the  mummies  of  the  same  ancient 
kingdom.  But  though,  with  distinguished  naturalists  on 
the  other  side,  we  would  not  venture  authoritatively  to 
determine  that  a  variety  so  extreme  could  have  originated 
in  the  ordinary  course  of  nature  in  so  brief  a  period,  just 
as  we  would  hesitate  to  determine  that  a  new  language 
could  originate  naturally  in  other  than  a  very  extended 
term,  we  would  found  little  indeed  upon  such  a  circum- 
stance, in  the  face  of  a  general  tradition  that  the  negroid 
form  and  physiognomy  were  marks  set  upon  an  offending 
family,  and  were  scarce  less  the  results  of  miracle  than  the 
confusion  of  tongues.  We  are  far  from  sure,  however, 
that  it  is  necessary  to  have  recourse  to  miracle.  The  Goth 
is  widely  removed  from  the  negro  ;  but  there  are  interme- 
diate types  of  man  that  stand  in  such  a  midway  relation 
to  both,  that  each  variety,  taking  these  as  the  central  type, 
is  divested  of  half  its  extremeness.  Did  such  of  our  Ed- 
inburgh readers  as  visited  the  Exhibition  of  this  season 
mark  with  what  scholar-like  exactness  and  artistic  beauty 
the  late  Sir  William  Allan  restored,  in  his  last  great  pic- 
ture ("  The  Cup  found  in  Benjamin's  Sack  "),  the  original 
Egyptian  form,  as  exhibited  in  the  messengers  of  Joseph  ? 
Had  the  first  men,  Adam  and  Noah,  been  of  that  mingled 
negroid  and  Caucasian  type,  —  and  who  shall  say  that 
they  were  not  ?  —  neither  the  Goth  nor  the  negro  would 


UNITY   OF  THE  HUMAN  RACES.  403 

be  80  extreme  a  variety  of  the  species  as  to  be  beyond  the 
power  of  natural  causes  to  produce. 

We  had  purposed  referring  at  some  length  to  that  por- 
tion of  the  argument  which  is  made  to  rest  on  analogy. 
We  have,  however,  more  than  exhausted  our  space,  and 
merely  remark  that  it  is  not  at  all  a  settled  point  that  the 
analogies  are  in  favor  of  creation  in  i  j^lurality  of  centres. 
Linnaeus  and  his  followers  in  the  jjast,  and  men  such  as 
Edward  Forbes  in  the  present,  assert  exactly  the  contrary ; 
and,  though  the  question  is  doubtless  an  obscure  and  dif- 
ficult one,  —  so  much  so  that  he  who  takes  up  either  side, 
and  incurs  the  onus  probandi  of  what  he  asserts,  will  find 
he  has  but  a  doubtful  case,  —  the  doubt  and  obscurity  lie 
quite  as  much  on  the  one  side  as  the  other.  Even,  how- 
ever, were  the  analogies  with  regard  to  vegetables  and  the 
lower  animals  in  fevor  of  creation  in  various  centres,  it 
would  utterly  fail  to  affect  the  argument.  Though  the 
dormouse  and  the  Scotch  fir  had  been  created  in  fifty 
places  at  once,  the  fact  would  not  yield  us  the  slightest 
foundation  for  inferring  that  man  had  originated  in  more 
than  a  single  centre.  Ultimately,  controversies  of  this 
character  will  not  fail  to  be  productive  of  good.  They 
will  leave  the  truth  more  firmly  established,  because  more 
thoroughly  tried,  and  the  churches  more  learned.  Nay, 
should  such  a  controversy  as  the  present  at  length  con- 
vince the  churches  that  those  physical  and  natural  sciences 
which,  during  the  present  century,  have  been  changing 
the  very  face  of  the  world  and  the  entire  region  of  human 
thought,  must  be  sedulously  studied  by  them,  and  that 
they  can  no  more  remain  ignorant  without  sin  than  a 
shepherd  can  remain  unharmed  in  a  country  infested  by 
beasts  of  prey  without  breach  of  trust,  it  will  be  produc- 
tive of  much  greater  good  than  harm. 


404  LnERART  AND  SCIENTITIO. 


VI. 

NORWAY  AND  ITS  GLAGIERS.^ 


There  is  a  striking  resemblance  in  form  and  aspect  be- 
tween the  Scandinavian  races  of  Denmark,  Sweden,  and 
Norway,  and  the  people  of  the  northeastern  coasts  of 
Scotland.  The  resemblance,  however,  is  not  restricted  to 
the  I'aces,  —  it  extends  also  to  the  countries  which  they 
inhabit.  The  general  features  of  Denmark  and  Sweden 
are  very  much  those  of  the  southern  districts  of  our  own 
country,  —  mayhap  rather  tamer  on  the  whole,  from  a  less 
ample  development  of  the  trap-rocks.  And  in  Norway 
we  have,  if  we  except  a  small  portion  of  its  southern  ex- 
tremity, simply  a  huge  repitition  of  the  Western  High- 
lands of  Scotland ;  it  is  a  Highlands  roughened  by  greater 
hills,  and  intersected  by  deeper  and  more  extensive  lochs, 
and  prolonged  far  beyond  the  Arctic  circle.  In,  however, 
their  physical  conditions,  both  Norway  and  the  Highlands 
are  wonderfully  alike  ;  but  with  this  interesting  difference, 
that  some  of  the  great  agents  which  modified,  in  the  re- 
mote past,  the  form  of  the  rougher  portions  of  our  coun- 
try, and  regarding  which  we  can  only  speculate  and 
theorize,  are  still  in  active  operation  in  Norway.  The 
loftier  Norwegian  mountains  rise  to  nearly  twice  the 
height  of  Ben  Macdhui  and  Ben  Nevis ;  the  country,  too, 
stretches  about  twelve  degrees  further  to  the  north  than 
Cape  Wrath,  and  runs  more  than  three  hundred  miles 
within  the  Arctic  circle.    And  so  it  has  its  permanent 


*  Norway  and  its  Glaciers  visited  in  1861,  etc.  By  James  D.  Forbes,  I>.C.L., 
F.K.S.,  Sec.  R  S.,  Ed.,  etc.  etc.,  and  Professor  of  Natural  Philosophy  in  tha 
Univeraity  of  Edinburgh. 


NORWAY   AND   ITS   GLACIERS.  405 

sncw-fields  and  its  great  glaciers,  that  are  in  the  present 
day  casting  up  their  moraines,  lateral  and  transverse,  and 
grooving  and  rounding  the  rocks  beneath,  just  as  our  own 
country  had  them  in  some  remote  and  dateless  age,  ere, 
mayhap,  the  introduction  of  man  upon  our  planet.  There 
are  other  respects  in  which  it  is  representative  rather  of 
the  past  than  of  the  present  of  Scotland.  It  still  retains 
its  original  forests,  and  presents,  over  wide  areas,  an  ap- 
pearance similar  to  that  which  was  pi-esented  by  the  more 
mountainous  parts  of  our  own  country  ere  the  formation 
of  our  great  peat-mosses.  The  range  of  the  Grampians, 
when  first  seen  by  Agricola,  must  have  very  much  resem- 
bled in  its  woody  covering  the  southern  Highlands  of 
Norway  at  the  present  day.  Professor  Forbes,  on  neai'ing 
the  Norwegian  coast,  was  struck,  on  first  catching  sight  of 
the  land,  by  the  striking  resemblance  which  it  bore  to 
some  of  the  gneiss  tracts  of  the  mainland  of  Scotland  and 
the  Hebrides.  The  gneiss  islands  of  Tyree  and  Coll  first 
occurred  to  his  mind ;  and  "  doubtless,"  he  says,  "  the  same 
causes  have  produced  this  similarity  of  character,  acting 
in  like  circumstances.  Both  belong  to  that  great  gneiss 
formation  so  prevalent  in  Norway,  and  also  in  Scotland, 
with  which  few  rocks  can  compare  in  their  resistance  to 
atmospheric  action  and  mechanical  force.  In  both  cases 
they  have  been  subjected  for  ages  to  the  action  of  the  most 
tremendous  seas  which  wash  any  part  of  Europe  ;  and 
they  have  probably  been  abraded  by  mechanical  forces  of 
another  kind,  which  have  given  the  rounded  outlines  to 
even  their  higher  hills."  As,  however,  the  Professor  ap- 
proached the  shore,  he  became  sensible  of  a  grand  distinc- 
tion between  the  mountain  scenery  of  Norway  and  the 
Scotch  Hebrides.  It  was  the  Scotland  of  eighteen  hun- 
dred years  ago  on  which  he  was  looking.  "  On  closer 
observation,"  he  says,  "  I  pei'ceived  that  the  low,  rounded, 
and  rocky  hills  which  I  had  at  first  believed  to  be  bare 
were  almost  everywhere  covered,  or  at  least  dotted  over, 
with  woods  of  pine,  which,  descending  almost  to  the  shore, 


406  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

gave  a  peculiarity  of  character  to  the  scenery,  at  the  same 
time  that  it  afforded  a  scale  by  which  to  estimate  its  mag- 
nitude." The  low  hills  which  had  at  first  rather  disap- 
pointed him  were  now,  he  found,  a  full  thousand  feet  in 
height. 

There  are  several  respects  in  which  Norway  may  be  re- 
garded as  a  country  still  in  its  green  youth.  These  prime- 
val forests  are  of  themselves  demonstrative  of  the  fact. 
Humboldt  well  remarks,  that  "  an  early  civilization  of  the 
human  race  sets  bounds  to  the  increase  of  forests;"  for 
"  nations,"  he  says,  "  in  their  change-loving  spirit,  gradu- 
ally destroy  the  decorations  which  rejoice  our  eye  in  the 
north,  and  which,  more  than  the  records  of  history,  attest 
the  youthfulness  of  our  civilization."  There  are  other  evi- 
dences that  at  least  the  northei*n  portions  of  both  Norway 
and  Sweden  were  unappropriated  by  man  during  the 
earlier  ages  of  Bi-itish  and  Continental  history.  It  is  a 
curious  fact,  adverted  to  by  Mr.  Robert  Chambers  in  his 
"  Tracings  of  the  North  of  Europe,"  that  in  the  great 
Museum  of  Antiquities  at  Copenhagen,  the  relics  of  the 
stone  period  have  been  furnished  by  only  Denmark  and  the 
southern  provinces  of  Sweden  and  Norway.  They  are 
not  to  be  found  in  the  far  provinces  of  the  north ;  and  the 
only  district  beyond  the  Baltic  in  which  they  occur  in  the 
ordinary  proportions  of  the  south  and  middle  portions  of 
Europe,  is  the  low-lying,  comparatively  temperate  prov- 
ince of  Scania.  It  is  doubtless  an  advantage,  in  some 
respects,  at  least  for  a  wild  and  mountainous  country  to 
be  still  in  its  youth.  Large  tracts  of  the  more  ancient 
Scottish  Highlands  lie  sunk  in  the  hopeless  sterility  of  old 
age.  In  many  of  their  so-called  forests,  that  are  forests 
without  a  living  tree,  —  such  as  the  Moin  in  Sutherland- 
shire,  or  that  tract  of  desert  waste  which  spreads  out 
around  Kingshouse  in  Argyleshire,  —  the  traveller  sees,  in 
the  sections  opened  by  the  winter  torrents,  two  periods  of 
death  represented,  with  a  comparatively  brief  period  of 
life  intervening  between.    There  is  first,  reckoning  from 


NORWAY   AND   ITS   GLACIERS.  407 

the  rock  "opwartl,  a  stratum  of  gray  angular  gra\"el,  formed 
of  the  barren  primary  rocks,  and  identical  with  the  angu- 
lar gravels  still  in  the  course  of  forming  under  the  attrition 
of  the  glaciers  of  Norway  and  the  Alps.  And  it  speaks 
of  the  ice-period  of  death,  when  the  country  had  its  per- 
manent snow-fields  and  its  great  glaciers.  Next  in  order 
Immediately  over  the  dead  gravel,  there  occurs  usually  a 
thin  stratum  of  mossy  soil,  bearing  its  tier  of  buried  stumps 
—  the  representatives  of  an  age  of  vegetable  life  when  the 
Highlands  were  what  Norway  is  now,  —  a  scene  of  wide- 
sjn-eading  forests.  And  then  over  all,  to  the  depth  often 
of  six  or  eight  feet,  we  find,  as  representative  of  a  second 
and  permanent  period  of  death,  a  cold,  spongy,  ungenial 
peat-moss,  in  which  nothing  of  value  to  man  finds  root,  save, 
perhaps,  a  few  scattered  spikes  of  deer-grass,  that,  springing 
early,  furnish  the  flocks  of  the  shepherd  with  a  week  or 
two's  provision,  just  as  the  summer  begins.  But  for  every 
agricultural  purpose  these  mossy  wastes  are  in  their  effete 
and  sterile  old  age,  and  the  yearly  famines  show  how  the 
poor  settlers  upon  them  fare.  Man  failed  to  appropriate 
them  during  their  cheerful  season  of  youth  and  life  ;  and 
over  wide  tracts  they  are  dead  —  past  resuscitation  now. 
In  Norway,  with  all  its  bleakness,  the  chances  in  favor  of 
the  people  are  better.  The  Norwegians  have  escaped  the 
curse  of  clanship ;  and  the  country,  still  in  the  vigor  of 
youth,  is  parcelled  out  among  many  proprietors,  who  till 
the  lands  which  they  inherit.  Even  in  its  wild  animals, 
Norway  is  a  larger  Scotland,  post-dated  some  ten  or  fifteen 
centuries.  It  has  the  identical  beaver,  bear,  and  wolf  still 
living  in  its  forests,  whose  remains  are  occasionally  found 
in  our  mosses  and  marl-pits. 

In  another  respect,  however,  Norway  resembles  our 
country  at  a  greatly  earlier  time  than  that  of  the  primeval 
forests.  Its  long  line  of  western  coast,  with  its  many 
islands  and  long-withdi"awing  fiords,  presents  everywhere 
the  appearance  of  a  land  not  yet  fairly  arisen  out  of  the 
eea.     The  islands  are  simply  the  tops  of  great  mountains, 


408  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

that  at  once  sink  sheer  into  deep  water ;  and  the  fiords, 
great  glens,  like  Glen  Nevis  and  Glencoe,  that  have  not 
yet  raised  themselves  out  of  the  sea.  One  may  voyage 
lor  many  miles  along  this  bold  coast  without  finding  a  bit 
of  shore  on  which  to  land  ;  and  such  must  have  been  very 
much  the  appearance  of  our  Western  Highlands  in  the  old 
ice-ages,  when  the  sea  stood  from  five  hundred  to  a  thou- 
sand feet  higher  along  our  steep  hillsides  than  it  does  now, 
or  rather  the  land  sat  from  five  hundred  to  a  thousand  feet 
lower.  Both  Professor  Forbes  and  Mr.  Chambers  refer  to 
the  great  freshness  of  the  raised  ten-aces  which  stretch  at 
various  heights  along  the  coast,  as  if  to  show  where  the 
surf  had  beat  during  prolonged  intervals  in  the  course  of 
upheaval ;  and  the  latter  gentleman  seems  to  have  been 
particularly  struck  by  the  freshness  of  the  sea-shells  that 
occur  at  great  heights,  and  by  their  identity  with  those 
which  now  live  in  the  neighboring  seas.  Professor  Keilhau 
showed  Mr.  Chambers  serpulae  on  a  rock-face,  scarce  a 
mile  from  the  busy  city  of  Christiania,  still  firmly  adhering 
to  the  spot  on  which  the  creatures  that  inhabited  them 
had  lived  and  died.  And  yet  that  rock  is  now  one  hun- 
dred and  eighty-six  feet  over  the  level  of  the  sea.  The 
great  abundance  and  freshness  of  the  shells  found  on  some 
of  the  raised  beaches  of  the  country  is  of  itself  an  object 
of  wonder.  "  Udd  walla,"  says  Mr.  Chambers,  in  his  "  Trac- 
ings," "is  a  name  of  no  small  interest  in  science,  because 
of  a  great  bed  of  ancient  shells  found  near  it.  The  efiect 
was  novel  and  startling,  when,  on  the  hill-face  o'erlooking 
the  fiord,  and  at  the  height  of  two  hundred  feet  above  its 
waters,  I  found  something  like  a  group  of  gravel-pits,  but 
containing,  instead  of  gravel,  nothing  but  shells!  It  is 
a  nook  among  the  hills,  with  a  surface  which  had  originally 
been  flat  in  the  line  of  the  fiord,  though  sloping  forward 
toward  it.  We  can  see  that  the  whole  space  is  filled  to  a 
great  depth  with  the  exuviae  of  marine  molluscs,  cockles, 
mussels,  whelks,  etc., — all  of  them  species  existing  at  this 
time  in  the  Baltic, — with  only  a  thin  covering  of  vegetable 


NORWAY   AND   ITS   GLACIERS.  409 

mould  on  the  surface.  I  feel  sure  that  some  of  these  ex- 
cavations are  twenty  feet  deep ;  yet  that  is  not  the  whole 
thickness  of  the  shell-bed."  In  the  fact  of  tjbe  identity  of 
these  shells  with  those  that  still  live  in  the  neighboring 
sea,  we  have  an  evidence  of  the  comparative  recentness 
of  the  upheaval  of  the  land.  In  our  own  country,  it  is 
only  those  shells  that  lie  embedded  in  the  terraco  which 
underlies  the  old  coast-line  that  are  identical,  in  at  least 
the  grouj),  with  the  existing  ones  of  the  littoral  and  lamiu- 
arian  zones  beyond.  The  higher-lyin^  shells,  not  yet  ex- 
tinct, which  occur  in  Britain  at  various  heights,  from  fifty 
to  fourteen  hundred  feet  over  the  present  sea-line,  are,  as 
a  group,  sub-arctic,  and  belong  to  the  ice-age. 

In  one  important  circumstance,  however,  Norway  and 
our  own  country  must  have  had  an  exactly  similar  history. 
In  both,  the  climate  has  been  greatly  more  mild  since  at 
least  the  historic  ages  began  than  it  was  in  an  earlier  time. 
When  Scotland  had  its  glaciers  and  snow  wastes,  Norway 
seems  to  have  been  enveloped  in  ice  ;  whereas  its  climate 
is  now  one  of  the  finest  in  the  world  for  the  same  lines  of 
latitude.  That  great  gulf  stream  which  casts  so  liberally 
on  the  northern  shores  of  Europe  the  tepid  water  of  the 
tropics,  is  no  doubt  one  of  the  main  causes  of  this  superi- 
ority in  the  climate  of  both  Norway  and  our  own  country 
over  all  other  countries  in  the  same  parallels.  "It  has 
been  calculated,"  says  Professor  Forbes,  "that  the  heat 
thrown  into  the  Atlantic  Ocean  by  the  gulf-stream  in  a 
winter's  day  would  suffice  to  raise  the  temperature  of  the 
part  of  the  atmosphere  which  rests  upon  France  and  Great 
Britain  from  the  freezing  point  to  summer  heat."  And 
such  are  the  efiects  on  the  distant  coast  of  Norway,  that, 
under  the  Arctic  circle,  or  at  least  the  sea-coast,  the  mercury 
rarely  sinks  beneath  zero.  The  absence  of  the  great  gulf- 
stream  would  of  course  leave  both  countries  to  the  climatal 
conditions  proper  to  their  position  ;  it  would  insure  to 
Scotland  the  severe  and  wintry  climate  of  Labrador,  and 
to  Norway  the  still  severer  climate  of  northern  Greenland, 
35 


410  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

Nor,  as  has  been  shown  of  late  by  Professoi'  Hopkins, 
would  it  require  a  very  considerable  depression  of  the  cen- 
tral parts  of^North  America  to  rob  northern  Europe  of 
the  signal  advantages  of  the  gulf-stream.  A  greatly  less 
considerable  sinking  of  what  is  now  the  vast  valley  of  the 
Mississippi,  and  of  the  lake  district  beyond,  than  that  of 
which  we  have  the  evidence  in  our  own  country,  would 
divert  its  waters  into  Hudson's  Bay  and  the  arctic  seas  be- 
yond ;  and  both  Great  Bi-itain  and  Norway  would  be  left  to 
the  severe  climatal  conditions  of  their  latitudinal  position 
on  the  globe.  Nor  is  it  in  the  least  improbable  that  such, 
during  the  glacial  ages,  was  the  actual  state  of  things. 
North  America,  as  certainly  as  our  own  country,  gives 
evidence  of  extensive  submergence  during  the  period  of  the 
existing  plants  and  shells. 

We  must  add,  that  Professor  Forbes's  volume  is  remark- 
ably well  written,  and  not  less  rich  in  the  picturesque  and 
the  poetic  than  in  the  severely  scientific.  There  has  been 
a  mighty  improvement  in  this  respect  in  what  may  be 
termed  the  pure  literature  of  science  during  the  last  cen- 
tury ;  and  at  the  present  time  some  of  the  severest  thinkera 
of  the  age  take  their  place  also  among  its  best  writers. 
Humboldt,  the  late  Arago,  Sir  David  Brewster,  and  Sir 
John  Herschel,  far  excel,  in  the  purely  artistic  department 
of  authorship,  most  of  our  mere  litterateurs.  We  have 
exhausted  our  space ;  but,  referring  our  reader  to  Professor 
Forbes's  interesting  volume  for  his  more  scientific  facts  and 
observations,  we  must  be  permitted  to  show  by  the  follow- 
ing extract  how  graphically  he  describes :  — 

"  We  are  at  the  head  of  the  Naradal,  one  of  those  singular  clefts 
common  in  Norway,  bounded  on  either  side  by  cliffs  usually  perpen- 
dicular, to  a  height  of  perhaps  fifteen  hundred  or  even  two  thousand 
feet ;  the  bottom  flat  and  alluvial,  and  terminating  abruptly  at  the 
head  of  a  steep  but  not  precipitous  slope.  Down  the  slope  the  road 
is  conducted  by  a  series  of  zigzags,  or  rather  coils,  in  a  masterly 
manner,  through  a  vertical  height  of  eight  hundred  feet,  —  a  very 
utriking  waterfall  rushing  down  on  either  hand,  and  rendering  the 


NORWAY   AND   ITS   GLACIERS.  411 

view  In  the  opposite  direction  wonderfully  grand.  It  is  generally 
agreed  that  no  more  genuine  specimen  exists  of  Norwegian  scenery 
than  the  Naraedal.  From  the  foot  of  the  descent  to  Gudvangen, 
on  the  banks  of  the  Narae-fiord,  the  road  is  nearly  level,  the 
whole  descent  on  several  miles  being  little  more  than  three  hundred 
feet.  The  mountains,  however,  preserve  all  their  absolute  elevation 
on  either  side,  so  that  the  ravine,  though  not  quite  so  narrow,  Is 
deeper.  The  masses  of  rock  on  the  right  rise  to  five  thousand  or 
six  thousand  feet,  and  a  thread  of  water  forming  the  Keel-foss  de- 
scends a  precipice  estimated  at  two  thousand  feet.  The  arrival  at 
Gudvangen  takes  one  by  surprise.  The  walls  of  the  ravine  are  un- 
interrupted ;  only  the  alluvial  flat  gives  place  to  the  unruffled  and 
nearly  fresh  waters  of  this  arm  of  the  sea,  which  reaches  the  door 
of  the  inn.  After  dining,  and  procnring  a  boat  and  three  excellent 
rowers,  we  proceeded  to  the  navigation  of  the  extensive  Sogne-fiord, 
of  which  the  Narae-fiord,  on  which  we  now  were.  Is  one  of  the  many 
intricate  ramifications.  The  weather,  which  had  fortunately  cleared 
up  for  a  time,  was  now  again  menacing,  and  a  slight  rain  had  set  In 
when  we  embarked.  The  clouds  continued  to  descend,  and  settled 
at  length  on  the  summits  of  the  unscalable  precipice  which  for  many 
miles  bound  this  most  desolate  and  even  terrific  scene.  I  do  not 
know  what  accidental  circumstances  may  have  contributed  to  the 
impression,  but  I  have  seldom  felt  the  sense  of  solitude  and  Isola- 
tion so  overwhelming.  My  companion  had  fallen  Into  a  deep  sleep ; 
the  air  was  still  damp  and  calm  ;  the  oars  plashed  with  a  slow  mea- 
sure into  the  deep,  blank,  fathomless  abyss  of  water  below,  which 
was  bounded  on  either  side  by  absolute  walls  of  rock,  without,  in 
general,  the  smallest  slope  of  debris  at  the  foot,  or  space  enough 
anywhere  for  a  goat  to  stand,  and  whose  tops,  high  as  they  Indeed 
are,  seemed  higher  by  being  lost  In  clouds,  which  formed,  as  It  were, 
a  level  roof  over  us,  corresponding  to  the  watery  floor  beneath. 
Thus  shut  in  above,  below,  and  on  either  hand,  we  rowed  on  amidst 
the  Increasing  gloom  and  thickening  rain,  till  it  was  a  relief  when 
we  entered  on  the  wider  though  still  gloomy  Aurlands-fiord." 


412  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 


VII. 

THE  AMENITIES   OF  LITERATURE. 

The  love  of  literature  amounts,  with  those  who  enter- 
tain it  most  strongly,  to  an  engrossing  passion  ;  and  there 
are  few  men  of  cultivated  minds,  however  much  engaged 
with  other  pursuits,  who  do  not  derive  from  it  a  sensible 
pleasure.  Even  when  politics  ran  highest,  and  first-class 
periodicals,  such  as  the  "  Edinburgh  Review "  and  the 
*'  Quarterly,"  were  toiling  in  the  front  of  their  respective 
parties,  none  but  the  most  zealous  partisans  could  deem 
their  literary  articles  second  in  interest  to  their  political 
ones  ;  and  to  the  great  bulk  of  their  readers,  however  sin- 
cere as  Whigs  or  hearty  as  Tories,  the  literary  ones  always 
took  the  first  place.  They  were  read  with  avidity  imme- 
diately on  the  delivery  of  the  numbers  which  contained 
them,  while  the  more  serious  disquisitions  had  to  wait. 
Literature,  in  fine,  was  the  sweetened  pabulum  in  which 
the  political  principle  of  these  works  was  conveyed  to  the 
public ;  and  had  the  pabulum  been  less  palatable  in  itself, 
or  less  generally  suited  to  the  public  taste,  the  medicine 
would  have  failed  to  take.  It  has  the  advantage,  too,  of 
being  so  general  a  pebulum,  that  men  of  all  parties  and 
professions,  if  of  equal  acquirement  and  cultivation,  take 
an  equal  interest  in  it.  It  is  the  most  catholic  of  pi-edilec- 
tions,  and  neutralizes,  more  than  any  othflr,  the  bias  of 
caste,  church,  and  party.  The  Protestant  forgets,  in  hii 
admiration  of  their  writings,  that  Pope  ard  Dryden  wen 
Papists ;  the  High  Churchman  luxuriates  over  Milton  ;  ola 
Samuel  Johnson  icj  admired  by  the  Liberal  and  the  Scot; 
and  the  Tory  forgets  that  Addison  waa  a  Whig.  In  this, 
as  in  other  respects,  a  love  of  literature  is  one  of  the  hu- 


THE   AMENITIES   OF   LITERATTJEE.  413 

nifinuii.y  vrinciples,  and  in  ages  of  controversy  and  con- 
tention ut  tendencies  are  towards  union.  It  gives  to  men 
who  difler  m  otner  matters  a  common  gi-ound  on  which 
they  can  meet  and  agree,  and  has  led  to  many  friendships 
and  acts  of  foroearance  and  good-will  between  men  who, 
had  they  been  devoid  of  it,  would  have  been  bitter  antag- 
onists and  personal  enemies.  There  have  been  mutual 
respect  and  admiration  from  this  cause  between  partisans 
on  the  opposite  sides  of  very  important  questions.  Swift 
and  Addison  still  called  each  other  friend,  at  a  time  when 
the  point  at  issue  between  their  respective  septs  was  vir- 
tually the  Protestant  Succession  ;  and  Scott  and  Jeffrey 
were  on  fair  terms  when  Whigs  and  Tories  were  engaged 
in  a  death-grapple,  with  the  Reform  Bill  looming  in  the 
distance.  Doubtless  one  of  the  causes  of  the  often-re- 
marked circumstance  that  while  fifth  and  sixth  rate  parti- 
sans are  almost  always  bitter  in  the  feelings  with  which 
they  regard  their  opponents,  and  ungenerous  towards  them 
in  their  resentments,  the  leaders  of  parties  are  compara- 
tively tolerant  and  humane,  may  be  traced  in  part  to  a 
community  of  tastes  and  sentiments  in  this  important  de- 
partment, and  in  part  to  that  superior  tone  of  thought  and 
feeling  which  it  is  one  of  the  great  functions  of  litei'ature 
to  foster  and  develop.  Many  of  our  readers  must  have 
had  opportunity  of  remarking  how  pleasant  it  is,  after  one 
has  been  shut  up  for  months,  mayhap,  in  some  country  sol- 
itude, or  engaged  in  some  over-busy  scene,  without  intelli- 
gent companionship,  to  meet  with  an  accomplished,  well- 
read  man,  with  whom  to  beat  over  all  the  literary  topics, 
and  settle  the  merits  of  the  various  schools  and  authors. 
It  is  not  less  pleasant  to  turn  to  one's  books  after  some 
period  of  close-engrossing  engagement,  and  to  clear  off, 
among  the  masters  of  thought  and  language,  all  trace  of 
the  homely  cares  and  narrow  thinking  which  the  season  of 
hard  labor  had  imperatively  demanded.  And  it  is  so  with 
peoples  as  certainly  as  with  individuals.  During  the  war 
so  happily  terminated,  the  nation  was  too  busy  and  too 
35* 


414  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

much  engrossed  to  listen  patiently  to  disquisitions,  how- 
ever ingenious,  on  literature  and  the  belleslettres.  Leaders 
and  articles  on  the  state  of  the  army  and  the  prospect  of 
the  campaign,  or  the  narratives  and  descriptions  of  "cor- 
respondents "  in  the  Crimea,  formed  the  staple  reading  of 
the  time ;  and  some  of  our  most  respectable  booksellers 
could  tell  very  feelingly,  on  data  furnished  by  their  bal- 
ance-sheets, how  little,  in  comparison,  was  the  interest  that 
attended  reading  of  any  other  kind.  The  roar  of  war 
drowned  the  voice  of  the  muses.  Now,  however,  the 
country  has  got  a  breathing  time  ;  its  period  of  all-engross- 
ing occupation  is  over  for  the  present ;  and  works  of  gen- 
eral literature  will  once  more  form  the  staple  reading  of  its 
more  cultivated  intellects.  Good  books  will  begin  to  sell 
better,  when,  at  least,  the  publishing  season  commences, 
than  they  have  done  for  the  last  two  years;  and  by  their 
measure  of  success  they  will  certify  respecting  the  tastes 
and  leisure-hour  occupations  of  that  great  and  influential 
portion  of  the  people  which  constitutes  the  reading  public. 
And  we  recognize  in  a  work  now  before  us  —  "Essays, 
Biographical  and  Critical,  chiefly  on  English  Poets,"  by 
Professor  David  Masson,^  which  has  just  issued  from  the 
Cambridge  press  —  one  of  the  class  of  books  which,  in  the 
circumstances  of  the  time,  this  portion  of  the  public  will 
delight  to  read,  and  be  the  better  and  happier  for  reading. 
Professor  Masson  is  a  high  representative  of  a  class  of 
literary  men  peculiar  to  the  age,  —  men  who  a  century  ago 
would  have  stood  prominently  forward  in  the  ranks  of 
authorship  as  the  writers  of  elaborate  volumes,  but  who,  in 
the  altered  circumstances  of  a  more  hurried  age  than  any 
of  those  which  preceded  it,  are  engaged  mainly  in  provid- 
ing the  reading  public  with  its  daily  bread,  and,  for  the 
sake  of  present  influence  and  usefulness,  are  content  in 
some  degree,  so  far  as  they  themselves  are  concerned,  to 
subordinate  the  future  to  the  passing  time.     Almost  all  the 

1  Essay?,   Biographical  aud  Critical,  chiefly  on  English  Poets.    By  David 
Uasson,  A.M.,  Professor  of  English  Literature  in  Unirersitj  College,  London. 


THE   AMENITIES   OP   LITERATURE.  415 

writing  produced  in  our  first-class  newspapers,  liowever 
distinguished  for  ability  or  influential  in  directing  opinion, 
passes  away  with  the  day,  or  at  least  with  the  week,  in 
which  it  has  been  produced.  Like  those  ephemeridae  which, 
born  in  the  morning,  deposit  their  eggs  and  die  before 
night,  it  makes  its  nidus  in  the  public  mind,  and  then  drops 
and  disappears.  Contributions,  however,  to  the  higher 
quarterlies  and  first-class  magazines  have  a  better  chance 
of  life;  and  we  have  already  a  class  of  works  drawn  from 
these  sources  which  bid  as  fair  to  live  as  almost  any  of 
the  more  elaborate  authorship  of  the  age.  Such  are  the 
collected  critiques  of  Jeffrey  and  Sydney  Smith,  the  phi- 
losophic papers  of  Macintosh,  the  brilliant  essays  of  Ma- 
caulay,  and  the  soberer  contributions  of  Henry  Rogers. 
And  to  this  class  the  Essays  of  Professor  Masson  belong ; 
nor  are  they  unworthy  of  being  ranked  among  the  v«ry 
foremost  of  their  class.  There  are  essays  in  this  volume 
which,  for  the  minute  knowledge  of  English  literature 
which  they  display,  and  their  nice  appreciation  of  the  dis- 
tinctive and  characteristic  in  our  higher  writers,  we  would 
place  side  by  side  with  the  chef  d'ceuvres  of  Jeffrey. 
Though  consisting  chiefly  of  contributions  to  the  quarter- 
lies, written  at  various  times,  and  published  in  different 
periodicals,  the  pieces  which  compose  the  work  have  been 
so  arranged  that  they  form,  with  but  few  gaps,  —  which  are 
more  than  compensated  for  by  at  least  as  many  happy  epi- 
sodes, —  a  history  of  English  literature  from  the  early  days 
of  Milton  down  to  those  of  Wordsworth.  Nor  are  there 
backward  glances  wanting,  which  bring  before  the  reader 
the  primeval  English  literature  of  the  times  of  Chaucer 
and  Spencer.  There  are  just  two  blanks  in  the  work, 
which  we  could  wish  to  see  filled  in  some  future  edition, 
—  a  blank  representative  of  that  period  which  intervened 
between  the  times  of  Swift  and  of  Chatterton,  during  which 
old  Samuel  Johnson  gave  law  to  the  world  of  letters,  and 
was  well-nigh  all  that  Dryden  had  been  for  the  decade 
that  preceded  and  the  decade  which  succeeded  the  Revo- 


416  LITERAKY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

lution  ;  and  a  second,  though  lesser  blank,  representative 
of  the  times  during  which  Burns  and  Cowper  flourished, 
and  in  which  the  school  of  Pope  gave  place  to  a  more 
national,  natural,  and  less  elaborate  school.  Among  what 
may  be  termed  the  episodes  of  the  work,  we  would  spe- 
cially instance  a  dissertation  on  what  we  may  term  the 
boundary  limits  of  prose  and  poetry,  which  we  deem  by 
far  the  ablest  and  most  satisfactory  which  we  have  yet 
seen  on  the  subject.  Much  has  been  written  on  what  may 
be  termed  the  conterminous  limits  of  the  two  provinces ; 
and  the  suits  have  been  many  that  have  originated  in  an 
erroneous  drawing  of  the  line.  As  in  the  famous  case  be- 
tween Dandy  Dinmont  and  Jack  Dawson  of  the  Cleugh, 
one  party  affirms  that  "  the  march  rins  on  the  tap  o'  the 
hill,  where  the  wind  and  water  sheers;"  while  another 
"contravenes  that,  and  says  that  it  hands  down  by  the 
auld  drove  road  ;  and  that  makes  an  unco  diflerence ; "  — 
some  critics  so  draw  the  line,  that,  like  Bowles  in  his  con- 
troversy with  Campbell,  they  almost  wholly  exclude  poets 
such  a»  Pope  and  Dryden  from  their  own  proper  domains ; 
while  others  affirm  that  there  exists  no  line  between  the 
two  domains  at  all,  but  that  whatever  in  thought  or  feeling 
finds  expression  in  verse,  may  with  equal  propriety  be  ex- 
pressed in  prose.  Byron's  terse  couplet  on  Wordsworth, 
whom  it  describes  as  a  writer 

"  Who,  both  by  precept  and  example,  shows 
That  prose  is  verse,  and  verse  is  only  prose," 

has,  though  in  a  somewhat  exaggerated  form,  made  this 
special  view  better  known  than  even  the  men  who  assert  it. 
Certainly  there  are  broad  grounds  common  to  both  prose 
and  verse ;  and  such  is  the  groundwork  of  truth  in  Byron's 
satirical  couplet,  though  in  a  widely  different  sense  froin 
that  which  the  satirist  himself  intended,  that  there  is  not 
much  in  even  the  highest  flights  of  the  poetry  of  Words- 
worth to  which  prose  might  not  attain.  We  know  not,  for 
instance,  a  single  passage  in  his  greatest  poem,  "  The  Ex- 


THE   AMENITIES    OF   LITERATUBE.  417 

cursion,"  that  might  not  find  adequate  expression,  not  only 
in  the  magnificent  prose  of  Milton,  or  Raleigh,  or  Jeremy 
Taylor,  but,  so  far  at  least  as  the  necessary  expression  is 
required,  in  even  that  of  Dryden  or  of  Cowley.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  the  poetry  of  Scott.  The  flights  in  "Mar- 
mion  "  or  the  "  Lady  of  the  Lake  "  rise  no  higher  than  those 
in  Waverley  or  Ivanhoe.  And  yet,  as  Professor  Masson 
well  shows,  there  certainly  is  verse  under  whose  burden 
the  highest  prose  would  utterly  sink.  We  have  remarked, 
in  travelling  through  the  Highlands  of  Scotland,  that 
almost  all  the  first-class  hills  of  the  country  take  the  char- 
acter of  hills  of  the  average  size,  with  other  hills  placed, 
as  if  by  accident,  on  the  top  of  them ;  and  there  is  a  very 
lofty  poetry  that  attains  to  its  greatest  elevation  on  a  sim- 
ilar principle.  The  imagination,  in  the  plenitude  of  its 
power,  is  ever  piling,  like  the  giants  of  old,  mountain  on 
the  top  of  mountain.  Let  us  draw  our  illustration  from 
Milton.  After  comparing  the  ai'ch-fiend,  as  he  "  lay  float- 
ing many  a  rood  "  on  the  burning  lake,  to  the  old  Titanian 
monster  that  warred  on  Jupiter,  the  poet  rushes  into  an- 
other and  richer  comparison :  he  compares  him  to 

"  That  sea-beast 
Leviathan,  which  God  of  all  his  works 
Created  hugest  that  swim  the  ocean  stream." 

And  here,  on  the  ground  common  to  prose  and  verse, 
the  comparison  should  stop.  But  the  imagination  of  the 
great  poet  has  been  aroused ;  the  glimpse  of  the  huge  sea- 
beast  80  fascinates  him  that  he  must  look  again;  and  a 
picture  is  the  consequence,  invested  with  circumstances  of 
poetic  interest,  and  finished  with  a  degree  of  elaboratioQ 
far  beyond  the  necessities  of  the  comparison  :  — 

"  Him  haply  slumbering  on  the  Norway  foam, 
The  pilot  of  some  small  night-foundered  skiflf 
Deeming  some  island,  oft,  as  seamen  tell. 
With  fixed  anchor  in  his  scaly  rind. 
Moors  by  his  side,  under  the  lee,  while  night 
Invests  the  sea,  and  wished  mom  delays." 


418  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

What  a  pile. of  imagery!  Mountain  cast  on  the  top  of 
mountain,  —  a  feat  for  the  greatest  of  the  giants,  and  far 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  most  poetic  prose-man,  or  the 
capabilities  of  prose  itself.  Our  other  example,  though  of 
a  more  homely  character,  will  be  found  scarce  less  illustra- 
tive of  this  piled-up  style,  peculiar  to  the  higher  poesy. 
Burns,  in  his  decidedly  anti-teetotal  "Earnest  Cry  and 
Prayer,"  after  adverting  to  the  deteriorating  effects  of  the 
wines  of  southern  Europe  on  the  nerves  and  framework 
of  the  Continental  soldiery,  describes  a  Scottish  soldier  an- 
imated for  the  contest  by  the  inspiration  of  usquebagh:  — 

"  But  bring  a  Scotsman  frao  his  hill. 
Clap  in  his  cheek  a  Highland  gill, 
Say,  Such  is  royal  George's  will, 

An'  there's  the  foe : 
He  has  nae  thought  but  how  to  kill 

Twa  at  a  blow." 

Now,  here  is  a  vigorous  stanza,  —  terse,  clear,  epigram- 
matic, and  charged  with  thought  equally  fitted  to  do  service 
either  as  prose  or  verse.  But  the  poet  catches  a  glance  of 
the  Highland  soldier,  the  poetic  blood  gets  up,  and  it  be- 
comes impossible,  for  the  time,  to  arrest  in  his  career  either 
soldier  or  poet :  — 

"  Nae  cauld  faint-hearted  doubtings  tease  him ; 
Death  comes;  wi'  fearless  eye  he  sees  him; 
Wi'  bloody  ban'  a  welcome  gi'es  him; 

An'  when  he  fa's, 
His  latest  draught  o'  breathin'  lea's  him 

In  faint  huzzas." 

Here,  again,  we  find  the  hill  piled  on  the  top  of  the  hill 
after  a  different  manner,  but  as  decidedly  as  in  Milton, 
and  alike  beyond  the  necessities  or  the  reach  of  prose. 
This  peculiar  region  of  poetry  seems  to  have  formed  a  sort 
of  inextricable  wilderness  to  the  more  prosaic  class  of  crit- 
ics. Lord  Karnes,  though  a  coarse,  was  an  eminently  sen- 
sible  man  ;  and  his  "  Elements  of  Criticism  "  is  a  work  that 


THE   AMENITIES   OF   LITERATURE.  419 

contains  many  striking  things.  What,  however,  the  French 
critic  termed  "  comparisons  with  a  tail,"  seem  fairly  to 
have  puzzled  him.  He  could  no  more  understand  why 
similes  should  have  caudal  appendages,  than  his  brother 
Judge,  Lord  Monboddo,  could  understand  why  men  should 
want  them.  And  so  he  instances  as  a  mere  "  phantom 
simile,  that  ought  to  have  no  quarter  given  it,"  the  very 
exquisite  one  which  Coriolanus  employs  in  describing  Va- 
leria, — 

"  The  noble  sister  of  Pophlicola, 
The  moon  of  Rome;  chaste  as  the  icicle 
That's  curdled  by  the  frost  from  purest  snow, 
And  hangs  on  Dian's  temple." 

The  shrewd  magistrate,  who,  to  employ  the  delicate 
jjeriphrase  of  Hector  in  the  "Antiquary,"  used  to  address 
his  learned  compeers  on  the  bench  by  the  name  ordinarily 
used  to  designate  "  a  female  dog,"  could  not  understand 
why  the  temple  of  Dian  should  be  introduced  into  this 
comparison,  or  what  right  the  icicle  had  in  it  at  all ;  and 
so  he  ruled  that  it  was  palpably  illegal  for  Shakspeare 
to  write  what  he,  a  judge  and  a  critic,  could  not  intelli- 
gently read.  The  conclusion  of  Professor  Masson  on  the 
respective  provinces  of  poesy  and  prose  is  worthy  of  being 
carefully  pondered  by  the  reader :  — 

"  In  the  whole  vast  field  of  the  speculative  and  the  didactic,"  saya 
the  Professor,  —  "a  field  in  which  the  soul  of  man  may  win  triumphs 
nowise  inferior,  let  illiterate  poetasters  babble  as  they  will,  to  those 
vf  the  mightiest  sons  of  song,  —  prose  is  the  legitimate  monarch, 
receiving  verse  but  as  a  visitor  and  guest,  who  will  carry  back 
bits  of  rich  ore,  and  other  specimens  of  the  land's  produce  ;  in  the 
great  business  of  record  also,  prose  is  preeminent,  verse  but  volun- 
tarily assisting  ;  in  the  expression  of  passion,  and  the  work  of 
moral  stimulation,  verse  and  prose  meet  as  coequals,  prose  under- 
taking the  rougher  and  harder  duty,  where  passion  intermingles  with 
the  storm  of  current  doctrine,  and  with  the  play  and  conflict  of 
social  interests,  —  sometimes,  when  thus  engaged,  bursting  into  such 
strains  of  irregular  music  that  verse  takes  up  the  echo  and  prolongs 


420  LITEKARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

it  in  measured  modulation,  leaving  prose  rapt  and  listening  to 
hear  itself  outdone  ;  and,  lastly,  in  the  noble  realm  of  poetry  or 
imagination,  prose  also  is  capable  of  a  1  exquisite,  beautiful,  and 
magnificent  etfects,  but  that  by  reason  of  a  greater  ease  with  fancies 
when  they  come  in  crowds,  and  of  a  greater  range  and  arbitrariness 
of  combination,  verse  here  moves  with  the  more  royal  gait.  And 
thus  prose  and  verse  are  presented  as  two  circles  or  spheres,  not  en- 
tirely separate,  as  some  would  make  them,  but  intersecting  and  intapene- 
trating  through  a  large  portion  of  both  their  bulks,  and  disconnected 
onltj  in  two  crescents  outstanding  at  the  right  and  left,  or,  if  you  adjust 
them  differently,  at  the  upper  and  lower  extremities.  The  left  or  lower 
crescent,  the  peculiar  and  sole  region  of  prose,  is  where  we  labor 
amid  the  sheer  didactic,  or  the  didactic  combined  with  the  practical 
and  the  stern.  The  right  or  upper  crescent,  the  peculiar  and  sole 
region  of  verse,  is  where  pathesis,  at  its  utmost  thrill  and  ecstasy, 
interblenda  with  the  highest  and  most  darting  jooiesis." 

This  is  vigorous  thinking  and  writing;  and  the  Profes- 
sor's volume  contains  many  such  passages.  We  would  in 
especial  instance  the  Essays  on  the  "  Literatui-e  of  the 
Restoration,"  on  "  Wordsworth,"  and  on  "  Scottish  Influ- 
ence on  British  Literature."  But  the  longest  and  finest 
composition  of  the  work  —  a  gem  in  literary  biography  — 
is  its  "Chatterton,  a  Story  of  the  Year  1770."  There  is 
perhaps  no  name  in  British  poetry,  of  the  same  frequency 
of  occurrence,  that  is  so  purely  a  name,  as  that  of 

"  The  marvellous  boy,  — 
The  sleepless  soul  that  perished  in  his  pride." 

Snch  of  his  poems  as  were  written  in  modern  English,  and 
in  his  own  proper  name  and  character,  are  not  pleasing, 
and,  sooth  to  say,  not  more  than  clever;  while  his  poems 
written  in  the  character  of  Rowley  are  locked  up  in  what  is 
virtually  a  dead  tongue,  considerably  different  from  that  of 
Chaucer  or  the  "  King's  Quair,"  or,  in  short,  from  any  other 
tongue  ever  written  by  any  other  poet.  And  as  there  is 
but  little  temptation  to  master  a  language,  and  that,  too,  a 
language  which  never  was  spoken,  for  th'3  sake  of  a  few 


THE   AMENITIES    OF   LITERATURE.  421 

poems,  however  meritorious,  most  men  are  content  to  take 
the  fame  of  the  Rowley  writings  on  trust,  or  at  least  to 
detei-mine  by  brief  specimens  that  they  are  in  reality  the 
wonderful  compositions  which  the  critics  of  the  last  age 
pronounced  them  to  be.  And  so  Chatterton  is  now  very 
much  a  bright  name  associated  with  a  dark  story.  Furtliei-, 
of  the  story,  little  more  survived  in  the  public  mind  than 
would  have  furnished  materials  for  an  ordinary  newspaper 
paragraph.  Chatterton  had  not  been  very  fortunate  in  his 
biographers;  and  it  was  but  known,  in  consequence,  that, 
living  in  an  age  not  unfamiliar  with  literary  forgery,  —  it 
is  unnecessary  to  give  instances  within  sight  of  the  great 
Highland  mountains,  —  he  had  fabricated  a  volume  of  old 
English  poems  greatly  superior  to  any  old  English  poems 
ever  written,  with  the  single  exception  of  those  of  Chau- 
cer; that,  quitting  his  native  place,  where  he  had  succeeded 
in  earning  not  more  than  the  modicum  of  honor  which 
prophets  ordinarily  achieve  for  themselves  when  at  home, 
he  had  gone  to  force  his  upward  way  among  the  wits  of 
London ;  and  that  there,  in  utter  destitution  and  neglect, 
he  had  miserably  destroyed  himself.  Such  was  all  that 
was  generally  known  of  Chatterton,  even  by  men  of  read- 
ing. Professor  Masson's  singularly  interesting  and  power- 
ful biography  fills  up  this  sad  outline  as  it  was  never  filled 
up  before;  and  shows  how  deep  a  tragedy  that  of  the  poor 
boy  was,  who,  after  achieving  immortality,  "perished  in 
his  pride,"  at  about  the  age  when  lads  who  purpose  pur- 
suing the  more  laborious  mechanical  professions  are  pre- 
paring to  enter  on  their  apprenticeships.  Further,  without 
aught  ajjproaching  to  formal  apology  for  the  offences  and 
shortcomings  of  the  hapless  lad,  it  shows  us  what  a  mere 
boy  he  was,  in  all  except  genius,  at  the  time  of  his  death. 
Sir  Walter,  in  referring,  in  his  "Demonology,"  to  the  young 
rascals  on  whose  extraordinary  evidence  so  many  old 
women  were  burnt  as  witches  in  Sweden,  has  some  very 
striking,  and,  we  think,  very  just  remarks,  on  the  obtuse- 
ness  of  the  moral  sense  in  most  children,  especially  boys 
36 


422  LITEfiART  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

*'  The  melancholy  truth,  that  the  '  human  heart  is  deceitful 
above  all  things,  and  desperately  wicked,'  is  by  nothing 
proved  so  strongly,"  we  find  him  saying,  "  as  by  the  imper- 
fect sense  displayed  by  children  of  the  sanctity  of  moral 
truth.  Both  gentlemen  and  the  mass  of  the  people,  as 
they  advance  in  years,  learn  to  despise  and  avoid  falsehood, 
—  the  former  out  of  pride,  and  from  a  remaining  feeling, 
derived  from  the  days  of  chivalry,  Xhat  the  character  of  a 
liar  is  a  deadly  stain  on  their  honor ;  the  other,  from  some 
general  reflection  upon  the  necessity  of  preserving  a  char- 
acter for  integrity  in  the  course  of  life,  and  a  sense  of 
the  truth  of  the  common  adage  that '  honesty  is  the  best 
policy.'  But  these  are  acquired  habits  of  thinking.  The 
child  has  no  natural  love  of  truth,  as  is  experienced  by  all 
who  have  the  least  acquaintance  with  early  youth.  If 
they  are  charged  with  a  fault  while  they  can  hardly  speak, 
the  first  words  they  stammer  forth  are  a  falsehood  to 
excuse  it.  Nor  is  this  all.  The  temptation  of  attracting 
attention,  the  pleasure  of  enjoying  importance,  the  desire 
to  escape  from  an  unpleasing  task,  or  accomplish  a  holiday, 
will  at  any  time  overcome  the  sentiment  of  truth, — -so 
weak  is  it  within  them."  A  sad  picture,  but,  we  fear,  a 
true  one ;  and  in  reading  the  tragic  story  of  Chatterton, 
we  were  oftener  than  once  reminded  of  it.  We  see  in 
almost  every  stage  of  his  progress  the  unripe  boy,  —  pre- 
cocious in  intellect,  and  in  that  only.  But  with  the  follow 
ing  powerful  passage,  taken  from  the  closing  scene  in  the 
sad  drama,  we  must  conclude,  —  meanwhile  recommending 
Professor  Masson's  work  to  our  readers  as  one  of  singular 
interest  and  ability :  — 

" '  He  called  on  me,'  is  Mr.  Cross's  statement, '  aboat  half-past  eleven 
in  the  morning.  As  usual,  he  talked  about  various  matters  ;  and  at 
last,  probably  just  as  he  was  going  away,  he  said  he  wanted  some  ar- 
senic for  an  experiment.'  Mr.  Cross,  —  Mr.  Cross,  —  before  you  go 
to  your  drawer  for  the  arsenic,  look  at  that  boy's  face  !  Look  at  it 
steadily ;  look  till  he  quails  ;  and  then  leap  upon  him  and  hold  him  I 
Mr.  Cross  does  not  look.  He  selh  the  arsenic  (yes,  sells,  for  somehow 


THE  AMENITIES   OP    LITERATURE.  423 

during  that  walk,  in  which  he  has  disposed  of  the  bundle  [of  manu- 
scripts], he  has  procured  the  necessary  pence),  and  lives  to  repent  it. 
Chatterton,  the  arsenic  in  his  pocket,  does  not  return  to  his  lodging 
immediately,  but  walks  about,  God  only  knows  where,  through  the 
vast  town.  '  He  returned,*  continued  Mrs.  Angell,  '  about  seven  in 
the  evening,  looking  very  pale  and  dejected,  and  would  not  eat  any- 
thing, but  sat  moping  by  the  fire  with  his  chin  on  his  knees,  and 
muttering  rhymes  in  some  old  language  to  her.  After  some  hours 
he  got  up  to  go  to  bed,  and  he  then  kissed  her,  —  a  thing  he  had 
never  done  before.'  Mrs.  Angell,  what  can  that  kiss  mean  ?  Detain 
the  boy ;  he  is  mad  ;  he  is  not  fit  to  be  left  alone ;  arouse  the  whole 
street  rather  than  let  him  go.  She  does  let  him  go,  and  lives 
to  repent  it.  '  He  went  up  stairs,'  she  says,  '  stamping  on  every 
f  tair  as  he  went  slowly  up,  as  if  he  would  break  it.*  She  hears  him 
reach  his  room.     He  enters,  and  locks  the  door  behind  him. 

"  The  devil  was  abroad  that  night  in  the  sleeping  city.  Down 
narrow  and  squalid  courts  his  presence  was  felt,  where  savage  men 
clutched  miserable  women  by  the  throat,  and  the  neighborhood  was 
roused  by  yells  of  murder,  and  the  barking  of  dogs,  and  the  shrieks 
of  children.  Up  in  wretched  garrets  his  presence  was  felt,  where 
solitary  mothers  gazed  on  their  infants,  and  longed  to  kill  them. 
He  was  in  the  niches  of  dark  bridges,  where  outcasts  lay  huddled 
together,  and  some  of  them  stood  up  from  time  to  time,  and  looked 
over  at  the  dim  stream  below.  He  was  in  the  uneasy  hearts  of  un- 
liscovered  forgers,  and  of  ruined  men  plotting  mischief.  He  was  in 
prison  cells,  where  condemned  criminals  condoled  with  each  other 
in  obscene  songs  and  blasphemy.  What  he  achieved  that  night  in 
and  about  the  vast  city  came  duly  out  into  light  and  history.  But 
of  all  the  spots  over  which  the  Black  Shadow  hung,  the  chief,  for 
that  night  at  least,  was  a  certain  undistinguished  house  in  the  narrow 
street,  which  thousands  who  now  dwell  in  London  pass  and  repass, 
Bcarce  observing  it,  every  day  of  their  lives,  as  they  go  and  come 
along  the  thoroughfare  of  Holborn.  At  the  door  of  one  house  in 
that  quiet  street  the  Horrid  Shape  watched  ;  through  that  door  he 
passed  in,  towards  midnight;  and  from  that  door,  having  done  his 
work,  he  emerged  before  it  was  morning. 

"  On  the  morrow,  Saturday  the  25th  August,  Mrs.  Angell  noticed 
that  her  lodger  did  not  come  down  at  the  time  expected.  As  he  had 
lain  longer  than  usual,  however,  on  the  day  before,  she  was  not 
alarmed.  But  about  eleven  o'clock,  her  husband  being  then  out, 
and  Mrs.  Wolfe  having  come  in,  she  began  to  fear  that  something 


424  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

might  be  the  matter  ;  and  she  and  Mrs.  Wolfe  went  up  stairs  and 
knocked  at  the  door.  They  listened  awhile,  but  there  was  no  answer. 
They  then  tried  to  open  the  door,  but  found  it  locked.  Being  then 
thoroughly  alarmed,  one  of  them  ran  down  stairs,  and  called  a  man 
who  chanced  to  be  passing  in  the  street  to  come  and  break  the  door 
open.  The  man  did  so  ;  and  on  entering  they  found  the  floor  lit- 
tered with  small  pieces  of  paper,  and  Chatterton  lying  on  the  bed, 
with  his  legs  hanging  over,  quite  dead.  The  bed  had  not  been  lain 
in.  The  man  took  up  some  of  the  pieces  of  paper  ;  and  on  one  of 
them  he  read,  in  the  deceased's  own  handwriting,  the  words,  '  I 
leave  my  soul  to  its  Maker,  my  body  to  my  mother  and  sisters,  and 

my  curse  to  Bristol.     If  Mr.  Ca ' :  the  rest  was  torn  oiF.     '  The 

man  then  said,'  relates  Mrs.  Angell,  '  that  he  must  have  killed  him- 
self; which  we  did  not  think  till  then.  Mrs.  Wolfe  ran  immediately 
for  Mr.  Cross,  who  came,  and  was  the  first  to  point  out  a  bottle  on 
the  window  containing  arsenic  and  water.  Some  of  the  bits  of  ar- 
senic were  between  his  teeth,  so  that  there  was  no  doubt  that  he  had 
poisoned  himself.' " 


A  STRANGE  STORY,  BUT  TRUE.         425 


VIII. 

A  STRANGE  STORY,  BUT  TRUE.^ 

It  is  now  nearly  forty  years  since  an  operative  mason, 
somewhat  dissipated  in  his  habits,  and  a  little  boy,  his  son, 
who  had  completed  his  twelfth  year  only  a  few  weeks  pre- 
vious, were  engaged  in  repairing  a  tall,  ancient  domicile, 
in  one  of  the  humbler  streets  of  Plymouth.  The  mason 
was  employed  in  re-laying  some  of  the  roofing ;  the  little 
boy,  who  acted  as  his  laborer,  was  busied  in  carrying  up 
slates  and  lime  along  a  long  ladder.  The  afternoon  was 
slowly  wearing  through,  and  the  sun  hastening  to  its  set- 
ting; in  little  more  than  half  an  hour,  both  father  and  son 
would  have  been  set  free  from  their  labors  for  the  eve- 
ning, when  the  boy,  in  what  promised  to  be  one  of  his 
concluding  journeys  roofwards  for  the  day,  missed  footing 
just  as  he  was  stepping  on  the  eaves,  and  was  precipitated 
on  a  stone  pavement  thirty-five  feet  below.  Light  and 
slim,  he  fared  better  than  an  adult  would  have  done  in  the 
circumstances ;  but  he  was  deprived  of  all  sense  and  rec- 
ollection by  the  fearful  shock  ;  and,  save  that  he  saw  for 
a  moment  the  gathering  crowd,  and  found  himself  carried 
homewards  in  the  arms  of  his  father,  a  fortnight  elapsed 
ere  he  awoke  to  consciousness.  When  he  came  to  himself, 
in  his  father's  house,  it  was  his  fii'st  impression  that  he  had 
outslept  his  proper  time  for  rising.  It  was  broad  daylight ; 
and  there  were  familiar  forms  round  his  bed.     He  next, 

1  Memoirs  of  Dr.  John  Kitto,  D.D.,  F.S.A.,  Editor  of  the  "  Pictorial  Bible  " 
and  the  "  Cyclopaedia  of  Biblical  Literature,"  Author  of"  Daily  Bible  Il'ustra- 
tions,"  etc.  Compiled  chiefly  from  his  Letters  and  Journals.  By  J.  E.  Ryland, 
M.A.  With  a  Critical  Estimate  of  Dr.  Kitto's  Life  and  Writings-  By  Professijr 
Eadie,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Glasgow. 

36* 


426  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

however,  found  himself  grown  so  weak  that  he  could 
scarce  move  his  head  on  the  pillow  ;  and  was  then  struck 
by  the  profound  silence  that  prevailed  around  him,  —  a 
silence  which  seemed  all  the  more  extraordinary  from  the 
circumstance  that  he  could  see  the  lips  of  his  friends  in 
motion,  and  ascertain  from  their  gestures  that  they  were 
addressing  him.  But  the  riddle  was  soon  read.  The  boy, 
in  his  terrible  fall,  had  broken  no  bone,  nor  had  any  of  the 
vital  organs  received  serious  injury;  but  his  sense  of  hear- 
ing was  gone  forever ;  and  for  the  remainder  of  the  half- 
century  which  was  to  be  his  allotted  term  on  earth  he  was 
never  to  hear  more.  Knowledge  at  one  entrance  was 
shut  out  forever.  As  is  common,  too,  in  such  circum- 
stances, the  organs  of  speech  become  affected.  His  voice 
assumed  a  hollow,  sepulchral  tone^  and  his  enunciation  be- 
came less  and  less  distinct,  until  at  length  he  could  scarce 
be  understood  by  even  his  most  familiar  friends.  For  al- 
most all  practical  purposes  he  became  dumb  as  well  as  deafl 
Unable,  too,  any  longer  to  assist  in  the  labors  of  his  dis- 
sipated father,  he  had  a  sore  struggle  for  existence,  which 
terminated  in  his  admission  into  the  poor-house  of  the 
place  as  a  pauper.  And  in  the  workhouse  he  was  set  to 
make  list-shoes,  under  the  superintendence  of  the  beadle. 
He  was  a  well-conditioned,  docile,  diligent  little  mute, 
and  made  on  the  average  about  a  pair  and  a  half  of  shoes 
per  week,  for  which  he  received  from  the  manager,  in  rec- 
ognition of  his  well-doing,  a  premium  of  a  weekly  penny, 
—  a  very  important  sum  to  the  poor  little  deaf  pauper. 
Darker  days  were,  however,  yet  in  store  for  him ;  he  was 
not  a  little  teased  and  persecuted  by  the  idle  children  in 
the  workhouse,  who  made  sport  of  his  infirmity ;  his  grand- 
mother, to  whom  he  was  devotedly  attached,  and  with 
whom  he  had  lived  previous  to  his  accident,  was  taken 
from  him  by  death  ;  and,  to  sum  up  his  unhappiness  at  this 
time,  he  was  apprenticed  by  the  workhouse  to  a  Plymouth 
shoemaker,  —  a  brutal  and  barbarous  wretch,  who  treated 
him  with  the  most  ruthless  indignity  and  cruelty, —  threw 


A   STRANGE   STORY,   BUT  TRUE.  427 

shoes  at  his  head,  boxed  him  on  the  ears,  slapped  him  on 
the  fiice,  and  even  struck  him  with  the  broad-faced  ham- 
mer used  in  the  trade.  Such  of  our  readers  as  are  ac- 
quainted with  Crabbe's  powerful  but  revolting  picture  of 
Peter  Grimes,  the  ruffian  master  who  murdered  his  appren- 
tices by  his  piecemeal  cruelties,  would  scarce  fail  to  find 
the  original  of  the  sketch  in  this  disreputable  wretch, — 
with  this  aggravation,  too,  in  the  actual  as  set  off  against 
the  fictitious  case,  that  the  apprentices  of  Peter  Grimes 
wei'e  not  poor,  helpless  mutes,  already  rendered  objects  of 
commiseration  to  all  well-regulated  minds  "  through  the 
visitation  of  God."  And  who  could  anticipate  a  different 
end  for  the  sadly-injured  and  sorely-misused  boy  than 
that  which  overtook  Peter's  apprentices  as  they  dropped 
in  succession  into  the  grave  ?  Were  it  to  be  seen,  how- 
ever, that  the  deaf  little  fellow,  apparently  so  shut  out 
from  the  world,  could  record  his  sufferings  at  this  time  in 
very  admirable  English,  the  hope  might  arise  that  there 
was  some  other  fate  in  store  for  one  w^ho  had  mind  and 
energy  enough  to  triumph  over  circumstances  so  unprece- 
dentedly  depressed  and  depressing.  The  following  are  ex- 
tracts from  a  journal  which  he  kept  while  under  the  brute 
master :  — 

*'  O  misery,  thou  art  to  be  my  only  portion  !  Father  of  mercy, 
forgive  me  if  I  wish  I  had  never  been  born  1  Oh  that  I  were  dead, 
if  death  were  an  annihilation  of  being ;  but  as  it  is  not,  teach  me  to 
endure  life :  to  enjoy  it  I  never  can.     Mine  is  indeed  a  severe  and 

cruel   master Threw  this  morning  a  shoe  in  my  face :  I  had 

made  a  wrong  stitch Struck  again Again.     I  could  not 

bear  it :  a  box  on  the  ear,  —  a  slap  on  the  face.  I  did  not  weep  in 
April  [when  his  grandmother  died],  but  I  did  at  this  unkind  usage. 
I  did  all  in  my  power  to  suppress  my  inclination  to  weep,  till  I  was 
almost  suifocated:  tears  of  bitter  anguish  and  futile  indignation  fell 
upon  my  work,  and  blinded  my  eyes.  I  sobbed  convulsively.  I 
was  half  mad  with  myself  for  suffering  him  to  sec  how  much  I  was 
affected.   Fool  that  I  was  !    Oh  that  I  were  again  in  the  workhouse  ! 

He  threw  his  pipe  in  my  face,  which  I  had  accidentally  bro« 

ken  ;  it  hit  me  on  the  temple,  and  narrowly  missed  my  eye I 


428  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

held  the  thread  too  short :  instead  of  telling  me  to  hold  it  longer,  he 
struck  me  on  the  hand  with  the  hammer  (the  iron  part).  Mother 
can  bear  witness  that  it  is  much  swelled  ;  —  not  to  mention  many 
more  indignities  I  have  received,  — many,  many  more.  Again,  this 
morning,  I  have  wept.     What's  the  matter  with  my  eyes !  " 

Alas,  poor  boy  !  And  all  this  took  place  in  proud  Eng- 
land, —  the  land  of  liberty  and  of  equal  rights  and  laws ! 
Flogging  is  not  a  punishment  for  men,  but  a  very  suitable 
one  for  brutes ;  and  had  the  brute  master  in  this  case  been 
tied  up  to  the  halberts  and  subjected  to  a  round  hundred, 
he  would  be  a  squeamish  reformer  indeed  who  could  have 
objected  to  so  just  and  appropriate  a  use  of  the  lash. 

Suddenly,  however,  this  dire  tyranny  came  to  a  close. 
A  few  excellent  men  connected  with  the  management  of 
the  workhouse  had  been  struck  by  the  docility  and  intel- 
ligence of  the  young  mute.  One  of  them,  Mr.  Buvnard, 
a  gentleman  who  still  survives,  struck  by  his  powers  of 
thought  and  expression,  had  furnished  him  with  themes 
on  which  to  write.  He  had  shown  him  attention  and  kind- 
ness, and  the  lad  naturally  turned  to  him  as  a  friend  and 
protector ;  and,  stating  his  case  to  him  by  letter,  the  good 
man  not  only  got  him  relieved  from  the  dire  thraldom  of 
his  tyrannical  master,  but,  by  interesting  a  few  friends  in 
his  behalf,  secured  for  him  the  leisure  necessary  to  prose- 
cute his  studies,  —  for,  even  when  his  circumstances  were 
most  deplorable,  the  little  deaf  and  dumb  boy  had  been 
dreaming  of  making  himself  a  name  in  letters,  by  produc- 
ing books  which  even  the  learned  would  not  despise,  — 
and,  by  means  of  a  liberal  subscription,  he  was  now  en- 
abled to  go  on  reading  and  writing,  with  —  wonderful 
change  for  him  whose  premium  pence  used  to  be  all  spent 
in  the  purchase  of  little  volumes !  —  the  whole  books  of  a 
subscription  library  at  his  command.  It  is  customary  to 
augh  at  the  conceit  and  egotism  of  the  young,  as  indica- 
tive of  a  mere  weakness,  which  it  is  the  part  of  after  years 
i-»f  sober  experience  to  dissipate  or  cure.  There  are  cases, 
however,  in  which  the  apparent  weakness  is  real  strength, 


A    STRANGE  STORY,  BUT  TRUE.  429 

—  a  moving  power,  without  which,  in  very  depressing  cir- 
cumstances, there  would  be  no  upward  progress,  for  there 
would  be  no  hope  and  no  motive  to  exertion ;  and  so  the 
poor  mute  boy's  estimate  of  himself,  while  yet  an  inmate 
of  the  workhouse,  though  it  may  provoke  a  smile,  may  be 
deemed  not  uninteresting,  as  in  reality  representative  of 
an  undercuiTent  in  the  character,  destined  to  produce  great 
results. 

"Dec.  bill,  1821.  —  Yesterday  I  completed  my  sixteenth  year; 
and  I  shall  take  this  opportunity  of  describing,  to  the  best  of  my 
ability,  my  person.  I  am  four  feet  eight  inches  high  ;  my  hair  is 
stiff  and  coarse,  of  a  dark  brown  color,  almost  black  ;  my  head  is 
very  large,  and,  I  believe,  has  a  tolerable  good  lining  of  brain  within  ; 
my  eyes  are  brown  and  large,  and  are  the  least  exceptional  part  of 
my  person  ;  my  forehead  is  high,  eyebrows  bushy,  nose  large,  mouth 

very  big,  teeth  well  enough,  and  limbs  not  ill-shaped You  have 

asked  me  why  I  have  in  many  places  used  the  expression,  '  When  I 
am  old  enough  in  other  people's  opinion.'  The  customs  of  this  coun- 
try have  declared  that  man  is  not  competent  to  his  own  direction 
until  he  has  attained  the  age  of  twenty-one.  Not  so  I.  I  never  was 
a  lad.  From  the  time  of  my  fall,  deprived  of  many  external  sources 
of  occupation,  I  have  been  accustomed  to  find  sources  of  occupation 
within  myself,  —  to  think  as  I  read,  as  I  worked,  or  as  I  walked. 
While  other  lads  were  employed  with  trifles,  I  have  thought,  felt,  and 
acted  as  a  man.  At  ignominious  treatment,  at  blows,  I  have  sup- 
pressed my  indignation  and  my  tears  till  I  have  felt  myself  almost 
choked.  I  have,  however,  felt  also  the  superiority  of  genius,  tchich 
would  not  allow  ignorance  to  triumph.  I  have  walked  hours  on  hours 
in  the  most  lonesome  lanes  I  could  find,  abstracted  in  melancholy 
musing ;  or,  with  a  book  in  my  hand,  1  have  sat  for  hours  under  a 
hedge  or  tree.  Sometimes,  too,  sheltered  from  observation  by  a  rock, 
I  have  sat  in  contemplation  by  the  riverside.  At  such  times  I  have 
felt  such  a  melancholy  pleasure  as  I  have  not  known  since  I  have 
been  in  the  hospital.  O  Nature  !  why  didst  thou  create  me  with  feel- 
ings such  as  these  V  Why  didst  thou  give  such  a  mind  to  one  in  my 
condition  V  Why,  O  Heavens  1  didst  thou  enclose  my  proud  scul 
within  such  a  casket  ?  Yet,  pardon  my  murmurs  ;  I  will  try  to  be 
convinced  that '  whatever  is  is  right.'  Kind  Heaven,  endue  me  with 
resignation  to  thy  will,  and  contentment  with  whatever  situation  it 
is  thy  pleasure  I  should  fill." 


430  LITERAKI    AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

Such  was  the  estimate  formed  of  himself  by  the  deaf 
workhouse  boy,  and  such  his  mode  of  expressing  it.  De- 
pressed as  his  circumstances  might  at  this  time  seem,  and 
little  favorable,  apparently,  to  the  development  of  mind, 
they  were  yet  not  without  their  peculiar  balance  of  advan- 
tage. Lads  born  deaf  and  dumb  rarely  master  in  after  life 
the  grammar  of  the  language  ;  for,  though  they  acquire  a 
knowledge  of  the  words  which  express  qualities  and  senti- 
ments, or  which  represent  things,  they  seenj  unable  to 
attain  to  the  right  use  of  those  important  particles,  adverbs, 
conjunctions,  and  prepositions,  which,  as  the  smaller  stones 
in  a  wall  serve  to  keep  the  larger  ones  in  their  places, 
give  in  speech  or  writing  order  and  coherency  to  the  others. 
But  the  deaf  lad  had  not  been  born  deaf:  he  had  read  and 
conversed,  and  even  attempted  composition,  previous  to 
his  accident ;  so  that  his  grandmother  could  boast  of  the 
self-taught  boy,  not  without  some  shadow  of  truth,  that  her 
"Johnnie  was  the  best  scholar  in  all  Plymouth."  And  now, 
writing  having  become  his  easiest  and  most  ready  mode  of 
communication,  the  speech  by  which  he  communicated  his 
ideas,  he  had  attained  to  a  facility  in  the  use  of  the  pen, 
and  a  command  of  English,  far  from  common  among  even 
university-bred  youths,  his  seniors  by  several  years.  He 
had  acquired,  too,  the  ability  of  looking  at  things  very 
intently.    It  has  been  well  said  by  the  poet, 

"  That  oft  when  one  sense  is  suppressed. 
It  but  retires  into  the  rest." 

And  it  would  seem  as  if  the  hearing  of  this  deaf  lad  had 
retreated  into  his  eyes,  which  were  ever  after  to  exercise  a 
double  portion  of  the  seeing  function.  All  this,  however, 
could  not  be  at  once  understood  by  his  friends.  There 
seemed  to  be  but  few  openings  through  which  the  poor 
deaf  and  dumb  lad  could  be  expected  to  make  his  way  to 
independence,  and  what  is  termed  respectability ;  and  it 
was  suggested  that  he  should  set  himself  to  acquire  the  art 
of  the  common  printer,  and  attach  himself  to  a  mission  of 


A  STRANGE  STORY,  BUT  TRUE.  431 

the  English  Church,  —  still,  we  believe,  stationed  in  Malta, 
—  that  sends  forth  from  its  press  many  useful  little  books, 
chiefly  for  distribution  in  the  East. 

Accordingly,  in  a  comparatively  short  time  the  deaf  lad 
did  acquire  the  art  of  the  common  printer,  —  nay,  more, 
he  became  skilful  in  setting  the  Arabic  character  ;  and, 
having  a  decided  turn  for  acquiring  languages,  though 
unable  to  speak  them,  he  promised,  judging  from  his  me- 
chanical and  linguistic  abilities,  to  be  a  useful  operative  to 
the  mission.  Unfortunately^  however,  —  for  such  was  the 
estimate  of  the  mission's  conductors,  —  he  was  not  content 
to  be  a  mere  operative :  his  instincts  drew  him  strongly 
towards  literature  ;  and,  ere  quitting  England  for  Malta, 
he  had  such  a  quarrel  on  this  score  with  some  very  excel- 
lent men,  that  he  threw  up  his  situation,  which,  however, 
through  the  mediation  of  kind  friends,  he  was  again  in- 
duced and  enabled  to  resume.  But  at  Malta,  where  the 
poor  deaf  lad  suffered  much  from  illness,  and  much  from 
wounded  affections,  —  for,  shut  out  though  he  was  from 
his  fellows,  he  had  yet  had  his  affair  of  the  heart,  and  the 
course  of  true  love  did  not  run  smooth  in  his  case,  —  the 
quarrel  was  again  resumed,  and  he  received  a  reprimand 
from  the  committee  of  the  mission  in  England,  which  was 
virtually  a  dismissal.  "The  habits  of  his  mind,"  said  the 
committee,  "  were  likely  to  disqualify  him  from  that  steady 
and  persevering  discharge  of  his  duties  which  they  con- 
sidered as  indispensably  requisite."  And  to  this  harsh 
resolution  the  late  excellent  Mr.  Bickersteth,  by  whom  it 
was  forwarded,  added  the  following  remark:  —  "You  are 
aware  our  first  principles  as  Christians  are  the  sacrifice  of 
self-will  and  self-gratification.  If  you  can  rise  to  this,  and 
steadily  pursue  your  work,  as  you  engaged  to  do,  you  may 
yet  fill  a  most  important  station,  and  glorify  our  Great 
Master.  But  if  you  cannot  do  this,  it  is  clear  that  the  So- 
ciety cannot  continue  in  its  service  those  who  will  not 
devote  themselves  to  their  engagements."  The  deaf,  soli- 
tary man  felt  much  aggrieved.     He  said,  and  said  truly, 


432  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

"  I  gave  the  Society  a  pledge,  which  there  does  not  live 
a  man  who  could  prove  to  an  impartial  person  that  I 
have  not  redeemed.  When,  after  the  labors  of  eight  or 
nine  hours,  the  office  was  closed  for  the  day,  I  felt  that  I 
was  at  liberty  to  partake  of  some  mental  refreshment. 
This  is  the  ground  of  my  dismissal.  Even  if  my  attach- 
ment to  literature  were  an  evil,  it  might  be  tolerated  whilst 
it  did  not  (and  it  did  not)  interfere  with  my  defined 
duties." 

It  is  not  now  difficult  to  adjudicate  between  the  poor 
deaf  man  and  this  learned  and  influential  Missionary  Soci- 
ety. No  ordinary  master  printer  in  Edinburgh,  or  else- 
where, would  think  of  treating  one  of  his  journeymen,  or 
even  one  of  his  apprentices,  after  this  fashion.  The  limits 
of  a  printer's  work  are  easily  ascertained.  Nine  tenths  of 
the  printers  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  are  employed  by 
the  piece,  the  others  are  placed  on  what  is  known  as  a  set- 
tlement/ and,  under  either  scheme,  there  is  a  portion  of 
their  time  which  is  not  sold  to  their  masters,  and  with 
which,  therefore,  a  master  cannot  honestly  interfere.  But 
the  grand  mistake  of  the  committee,  and  of  worthy  Mr. 
Bickersteth,  in  this  not  uninstructive  case,  seems  to  have 
been  founded  on  a  certain  goody  sentiment,  from  which 
missionaries  such  as  the  brethren  of  the  Society  of  Jesus 
would  have  been  saved  by  their  sagacious  discernment  of 
the  capabilities  and  spirits  of  men,  and  the  ordinary  master 
printer,  by  his  knowledge  of  the  proper  tale  of  work  which 
an  operative  ought  to  furnish,  and  his  full  recognition  of 
the  common  business  rule,  that  the  time  is  not  the  master's, 
but  the  operative's  own,  for  which  the  master  does  not  pay. 
The  committee  and  Mr.  Bickersteth  evidently  held,  on  the 
other  hand,  that  the  deaf  lad,  being  a  missionary  printer, 
ought  to  have  his  heart  and  soul  in  the  missionary  printing, 
and  in  nothing  else ;  that  the  work  of  writing  and  trans- 
lating was  a  work  to  be  done  by  other  heads  and  hands 
than  his,  —  heads  and  hands  trained,  mayhap,  at  Cambridge 
or  Oxford  ;  and  that  the  literary  studies  pursued  by  the 


A   STRANGE   STORY,   BUT  TRUE.  433 

lad  after  office-hours  were  over  were  mere  works  of  "  self- 
will  "  and  "self-gratification,"  and  not  suited  to  "glorify 
the  Great  Master."  In  order  to  glorify  the  Great  Master, 
it  was  necessary,  they  held,  that  the  deaf  lad  should  give 
his  heart  exclusively  to  the  printing  of  the  mission.  Alas! 
the  good  men  were  strangely  in  error.  The  Great  Master 
had,  we  now  know,  quite  other  work  for  the  deaf  lad.  We 
are  ignorant  of  what  the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  men  of 
the  Malta  Mission  have  done,  —  what  they  could,  we  dare 
say,  and  we  are  sure  they  think  it  all  too  little  ;  but  their 
labors  will  scarce  ever  be  brought  into  competition  with 
those  of  the  greatest  Biblical  illustrator  of  modern  times. 
"What  Dr.  Chalmers  used  to  term  his  Biblical  library  con- 
sisted of  four  great  standard  works  ;  and  of  these  select 
four.  Dr.  Kitto's  "Pictorial  Bible"  was  much  a  favorite. 
"I  feel  quite  sure,"  we  find  him  saying,  in  his  "Daily  Scrip- 
ture Readings,"  "  that  the  use  of  the  sacred  dialogues  as  a 
school-book,  and  the  pictures  of  Scripture  scenes  which 
interested  my  boyhood,  still  cleave  to  me,  and  impart  a 
peculiar  tinge  and  charm  to  the  same  representations  when 
brought  within  my  notice.  Perhaps  when  I  am  moulder- 
ing in  my  coffin,  the  eye  of  my  dear  Tommy  .[his  grandson] 
may  light  upon  this  page ;  and  it  is  possible  that  his  rec- 
ollections may  accord  with  my  present  anticipations  of  the 
effect  that  his  delight  in  the  '  Pictorial  Bible '  may  have 
in  endearing  still  more  to  him  the  holy  Word  of  God."  In 
the  peculiar  walk  in  which  Dr.  John  Kitto  specially  ex- 
celled all  other  writers,  the  great  Chalmers  was  content  to 
accept  him  as  his  teacher,  and  to  sit  at  his  feet ;  and  the 
poor,  friendless,  deaf  lad,  who  so  offended  the  committee 
of  the  Maltese  Mission  by  devoting  to  literature  the  time 
which  was  indisputably  his  own,  not  theirs,  was  this  same 
John  Kitto,  —  a  name  now  scarce  less  widely  known, 
though  in  a  different  walk,  than  that  of  Chalmers  himself. 
Dismissed  from  his  situation,  he  returned  to  England 
with  but  forlorn  prospects.  There  was,  however,  work 
for  him  to  do ;  and  an  unexpected  opening,  which  provi- 
37 


434  LITERART  AIH)   SCIENTIFIC. 

dentially  occurred  shortly  after  his  arrival,  served  greatly 
to  fit  him  for  it.  A  missionary  friend,  bound  for  central 
Persia,  engaged  him  to  accompany  him  on  the  journey  as 
tutor  to  his  two  boys,  —  a  charge  for  which  his  previous 
studies,  pursued  under  the  direst  disadvantages,  adequately 
fitted  him  ;  and,  with  his  eyes  all  the  more  widely  open 
from  the  circumstance  that  his  ears  were  shut,  he  travelled 
through  Russian  Europe  into  Persia,  saw  the  greater  and 
lesser  Ararats,  passed  through  the  Caucasian  range  of 
mountains,  loitered  amid  the  earlier  seats  of  the  human 
family,  forded  the  Euphrates  near  its  source,  resided  for 
about  two  years  in  Bagdad,  witnessed  the  infliction  of  war, 
famine,  and  pestilence,  and  then  —  his  task  of  tuition  com- 
pleted— journeyed  homeward  by  Teheran,  Tabreez,  Treb- 
izond,  and  Constantinople,  to  engage  in  his  great  work. 
His  quiet  life  was  not  without  its  due  share  of  striking  in- 
cident. We  have  referred  to  a  story  of  wounded  affection. 
On  his  return  to  England,  he  found  that  she  who  had  de- 
ceived and  forsaken  him  had  deeply  regretted  the  part  she 
had  acted,  and  was  now  no  more  ;  and  for  years  after,  he 
bore  about  with  him  a  sad  and  widowed  heart.  In  his 
second  return  he  had  a  companion,  a  young  man  in  deli- 
cate health,  who,  when  detained  with  him  in  quarantine  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Thames,  sickened  and  died.  The  de- 
scription of  the  quarantine  burying-ground,  in  which  his 
remains  were  deposited,  is  suited  to  remind  the  reader  of 
some  of  the  descriptions  of  similar  places  given  by  Dickens. 

"  We  went,"  says  Kitto,  in  his  journal,  "  in  a  boat  of  the  vessel,  to 
a  kind  of  low  island  devoted  to  the  burial  of  persons  dying  in  quar- 
antine. The  coffin  was  plain,  without  a  plate,  and  with  pieces  of 
ropes  for  handles,  but  had  the  honor  of  being  covered  with  the  ensign 
of  the  doctor's  ship  as  a  pall.  The  grave-place,  overgrown  with  long, 
reedy  grass,  was  not  more  than  a  few  paces  from  the  water's  edge ; 
and  its  uses  were  indicated  only  by  what  the  captain  calls  '  wooden 
tomhotones,'  of  which  there  are  only  two,  both  dated  1832,  and  all  of 
wood,  painted  of  a  stone  color,  the  first  I  have  seen  in  England. 
S was  carried  to  his  last  home  by  the  sailors  of  our  vesv>l- 


A  STRANGE  STORY,  BUT  TRUE.         435 

On  arriving  at  the  grave,  we  found  it  of  dark  clay,  with  water  at 
the  bottom;  a  wet  ditch  being  near,  above  its  level.  It  was  also  too 
email,  and  we  had  to  wait  till  it  was  enlarged  ;  and  then,  the  coffin 
being  brought  to  the  side,  ready  to  be  let  down,  the  doctor's  head 
servant  took  out  a  prayer-book,  and,  all  uncovering,  read  a  part  of 
the  burial  service.  We  waited  till  the  grave  was  filled  up  and  banked 
over;  and  then,  with  a  sigh,  not  the  last,  returned  to  the  boat.  On 
our  return,  the  flags,  which  had  hitherto  been  floating  half-mast  high, 
were  raised  to  their  usual  position." 

Kitto's  fellow-traveller,  whose  dust  he  saw  thus  con- 
BignecT  to  the  dark,  obscure  burial-yard  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Thames,  had  been  engaged  to  a  young  lady,  on  whom, 
after  his  release  from  quarantine,  the  deaf  man  waited,  to 
communicate  to  her  the  fate  of  her  lover.  The  two  wid- 
owed hearts  drew  kindly  together ;  and  in  course  of  time 
the  lady  became  Mrs.  Kitto,  —  a  match  from  which  her 
husband,  now  entering  on  a  literary  life  of  intense  labor, 
derived  great  comfort  and  supj^ort. 

Never  did  literary  man  toil  harder  or  more  incessantly. 
His  career  as  an  author  commenced  in  1833,  and  termi- 
nated at  the  close  of  1853 ;  and  during  that  period  he 
produced  twenty-one  separate  works,  some  of  them  of 
profound  research  and  great  size.  Among  these  we  may 
enumerate  the  "Pictorial  Bible,"  the  "Pictorial  History 
of  Palestine,"  the  "  History  of  Palestine  from  the  Patri- 
archal Age  to  the  Present  Time,"  the  "  Cyclop£edia  of  Bib- 
lical Literature,"  the  "Lost  Senses,"  "Scripture  Lands," 
and  the  "Daily  Bible  Illustrations."  And  in  order  to  pro- 
duce this  amazing  amount  of  elaborate  writings.  Dr.  Kitto 
used  to  rise,  year  after  year,  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
and  toil  on  till  night.  But  the  overwrought  brain  at 
length  gave  way,  and  in  his  fiftieth  year  he  broke  down 
and  died.  Could  he  have  but  retained  the  copyright  of 
his  several  works,  ho  would  have  been  a  wealthy  man  ;  he 
would  at  least  have  left  a  competency  to  his  family.  But 
commencing  without  capital,  and  compelled,  by  the  inev- 
itable expense  of  a  growing  family,  to  labor  for  the  book* 


436  LITERARY  AND  SCIENTIFIC. 

Bellevs,  he  was  ever  engaged  in  "providing,"  according  to 
Johnson,  "for  the  day  that  was  passing  over  him,"  and 
died,  in  consequence,  a  poor  man.  And  his  widow  and 
family  have,  we  understand,  a  direct  interest  in  the  sale 
of  the  well-written  and  singularly  interesting  biographic 
work  to  which  we  are  indebted  for  the  materials  of  our 
article,  and  which  we  can  recommend  with  a  good  con- 
science to  the  notice  of  our  readers.  We  know  not  a  finer 
example  than  that  which  it  furnishes  of  the  "  pursuit  of 
knowledge  under  difficulties,"  nor  of  a  devout  and  honest 
man  engrossingly  engaged  in  an  important  work,  in  which 
he  was  at  length  to  affect  the  thinking  of  his  age,  and  to 
instruct  and  influence  its  leading  minds.  It  may  be  in- 
teresting to  remark  how  such  a  man  received  the  first 
decided  direction  in  his  course  of  study ;  and  so  the  fol- 
lowing extract,  with  which  we  conclude,  of  a  letter  on  the 
subject  from  a  gentleman  much  before  the  public  at  the 
present  time,  ll'om  his,  we  believe,  honest  and  fearless 
report  on  the  mismanagement  of  our  leading  officers  in 
the  Crimea  during  the  campaign  now  brought  happily  to 
a  close,  may  be  regarded  by  our  readers  as  worthy  of 
perusal : — 

"  My  first  meeting  with  Kitto,"  says  Sir  John  M'Neill,  "  was  at 
Tabrcez,  in  1829.  He  was  going  with  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Groves  and 
their  two  sons  to  Bagdad,  where  Mr.  Groves  intended  to  establish 
himself  as  a  missionary.  KItto  was  then  acting  as  tutor  to  the  two 
boys,  who  were  lively  and  intelligent ;  and  I  was  struck  with  the 
singularity  of  his  position,  as  the  deaf  and  almost  dumb  teacher  of 
boj's  who  were  very  far  from  being  either  deaf  or  dumb.  This  cir- 
cumstance, and  the  loneliness  of  mind  which  was  a  necessary  conse- 
quence of  his  inability  to  communicate  with  the  persons  whom  he 
was  thrown  amongst  at  Tabreez,  led  me  to  put  some  questions  to  him 
in  writing,  with  the  view  of  drawing  him  into  conversation ;  but  I 
found  great  difficulty  in  comprehending  bis  answers,  in  consequence 
of  the  peculiarity  of  his  voice  and  enunciation.  With  the  assistance 
of  his  pupils,  however,  who  spoke  with  great  rapidity  on  their  fingers, 
and  appeared  to  have  no  difficulty  in  understanding  what  he  said,  I 
succeeded  in  engaging  him  in  such  conversation  as  could  be  so  carried 


A  STRANGE  STORY,  BUT  TRUE.         437 

on.  I  found  his  intelligence  and  his  information  vastly  greater  than 
I  had  anticipated.  He  had  evidently  the  greatest  avidity  for  informa- 
tion ;  but  was  restrained  from  pressing  his  inquiries,  apparently  by  his 
modesty,  and  the  fear  of  being  considered  obtrusive  or  troublesome. 
Finding  him  •well  read  and  deeply  interested  in  the  Scriptures,  I  di- 
rected his  attention  to  the  many  incidental  allusions  in  the  Bible  to 
circumstances  connected  with  Oriental  habits  and  modes  of  life,  which 
had  become  intelligible  to  me  only  after  I  had  been  for  some  time  in 
the  East.  I  remember  he  was  particularly  interested  in  something  I 
had  said  in  illustration  of  the  importance  attaching  to  the  fact  that 
'  Jacob  digged  a  well.'  I  had  explained  to  him,  that,  in  arid  coun- 
tries, where  cultivation  could  only  be  carried  on  by  means  of  irriga- 
tion, the  land  was  of  no  value  unless  when  water  could  be  brought 
to  irrigate  it ;  and  that  in  Persia  the  theory  of  the  law  still  is,  that 
he  who  digs  a  well  in  (he  desert  is  entitled  to  the  land  which  it  will 
irrigate.  He  came  to  me  more  than  once  for  fuller  information  upon 
this  subject,  and  was  greatly  delighted  with  some  illustrations  of 
Scripture  which  I  pointed  out  to  him  in  '  Morler's  Second  Journey 
to  Persia.'  I  refer  to  these  circumstances  because  I  believe  that 
they  relate  to  the  first  steps  of  that  inquiry  which  he  prosecuted  so 
assiduously  and  successfully  during  the  remainder  of  his  life,  and  to 
which  he  constantly  recurred  almost  every  time  I  met  him  afterwarda* 
either  in  Asia  or  in  England." 
37* 


438  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 


IX. 

THE  IDEALISTIC  SCHOOL. 

It  is  not  often  in  these  latter  days  that  a  metaphysical 
question  is  forced  on  the  notice  of  the  public.  The  muse 
of  abstract  thought  —  the  genius  that  asserts  as  lier  special 
province  the  region  of  "being  and  knowing" — has  been 
dozing  for  at  least  an  age  in  a  state  of  partial  hybernation, 
sucking  her  paws  in  closets  and  class-rooms,  and  getting 
so  marvellously  thin  and  spiritual  under  the  process,  that 
her  attenuated  form  has  long  since  failed  to  make  any 
very  distinct  impression  on  the  retina  of  the  community. 
The  cas'e  was  widely  different  once.  During  the  latter 
half  of  the  last  century  no  other  class  of  questions  pos- 
sessed half  so  great  an  intei'est  in  Scotland  as  metaphysical 
ones.  Metaphysical  had  succeeded  to  theological  disqui- 
sition, and  was  pursued  with  equal  earnestness ;  partly, 
no  doubt,  because  the  metaphysics  of  the  age  had  set  the 
theology  of  the  age  that  had  gone  before  virtually  on  its 
trial,  but  in  great  part  also  because  the  largest  minds  of 
the  time  had  given  themselves  to  the  work;  and,  further, 
because  the  limited  character  of  that  cycle  in  which  the 
mental  philosophy  is  doomed  to  expatiate  was  not  yet 
known.  Early  in  the  present  century  the  interest  had  in 
some  degree  begun  to  flag,  and  the  keen  eye  of  Jeffrey 
was  one  of  the  first  to  detect  the  slacking  of  the  tide. 
And  in  his  ingenious  critique  on  "Stewart's  Life  of  Reid," 
he  attempted  to  render  a  reason  for  it.  The  age  had  al- 
ready started  forward  in  that  course  of  natural,  physical, 
and  mechanical  experiment  in  which  such  distinguished 
trophies  have  since  been  won,  and  which  have  given  its 


THE   IDEALISTIC    SCHOOL.  439 

peculiar  character  to  tlie  time ;  and  it  had  become  impa- 
tient, said  the  critic,  of  barren,  non-productive  observation. 
And  it  was  a  grand  distinction,  he  held,  between  the 
l)hysical  and  the  metaphysical  walks,  that,  while  experiment 
reigned  paramount  in  the  one,  and  formed  the  all-potent 
key  by  which  man  could  lay  open  at  will  the  arcana  of 
nature,  and  arm  himself  with  her  powers,  observation  only 
could  be  employed  in  the  other,  —  a  mere  passive  faculty, 
that  had  an  ability  of  seeing,  but  none  whatever  of  con- 
trolling. Hence,  he  argued,  the  unproductive  character 
of  metaphysical  science,  and  the  natural  preference  which 
the  public  had  begun  to  manifest,  on  ascertaining  such  to 
be  its  character,  for  pursuits  through  which  solid  benefits 
were  to  be  secured.  "  In  the  proper  experimental  philos- 
ophy," he  said,  "every  acquisition  of  knowledge  is  an  in- 
crease of  power,  because  the  knowledge  is  necessarily  de- 
rived from  some  intentional  disposition  of  materials,  which 
we  may  always  command  in  the  same  manner.  In  the 
philosophy  of  observation,  it  is  merely  a  gratification  of 
our  curiosity.  The  phenomena  of  the  human  mind  are  al- 
most all  of  the  latter  description.  We  feel,  and  perceivt, 
and  remember,  without  any  purpose  or  contrivance  of 
ours,  and  have  evidently  no  power  over  the  mechanism  by 
which  those  functions  are  performed.  We  cannot  decom- 
pose our  perceptions  in  a  crucible,  nor  divide  our  sensations 
by  a  prism ;  nor  can  we  by  act  and  contrivance  produce 
any  combination  of  thoughts  or  emotions  besides  those 
with  which  all  men  have  been  provided  by  nature.  No 
metaphysician  expects  by  analysis  to  discover  a  new  power, 
or  to  excite  a  new  sensation,  in  the  mind,  as  a  chemist  dis- 
covers a  new  earth  or  a  new  metal ;  nor  can  he  hope  by 
any  process  of  synthesis  to  exhibit  a  mental  combination 
different  from  any  that  nature  has  produced  in  the  minds 
of  other  persons." 

Certainly  metaphysical  found  in  physical  science  at  the 
beginning  of  the  present  century  a  formidable  rival,  that 
could  reward  her  followers  much  morxj  largely  than  she 


440  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

could ;  and  even  ere  the  retirement  of  Dngald  Stewart, 
her  decline  in  interest  and  influence,  which  the  keen  eyo 
of  Jeffrey  had  remarked  at  an  earlier  period,  might  be  seen 
by  all.  The  genius  of  Thomas  Brown  created  a  diversion 
in  her  favor;  but  he  sank  and  died  in  middle  life,  and  his 
science  in  Scotland  might  be  said  to  die  with  him.  His 
successor  in  the  moral  philosophy  chair  of  our  university 
was  at  least  his  equal  in  genius ;  but  the  bent  of  Wilson 
was  literary,  not  scientific ;  and  the  enthusiasm  which  he 
excited  among  his  pupils  was  an  enthusiasm  for  the  sensu- 
ous, not  the  abstract.  But  while  all  must  agree  in  the 
fact  remarked  by  Jeffrey,  many  may  fail  to  acquiesce  in 
the  cause  which  he  assigns  for  it.  Pursuits  not  more  prof- 
itable than  metaphysical  ones  have  been  eminently  popu- 
lar in  the  age  just  gone  by,  and  are  so  still.  We  know 
not  that  we  should  instance  theology,  seeing  that  on  theo- 
logical truth  man's  most  important  interests  may  be  re- 
garded as  suspended  ;  but  we  surely  may  instance  that 
department  of  philosophic  criticism  in  which  Jeffrey  him- 
self won  his  laurels.  We  may  instance,  besides,  at  least 
two  of  the  natural  sciences,  astronomy  and  geology,  neither 
of  them  more  rich  of  dowry  than  metaphysical  science  it- 
self, and  which  cannot  be  advantageously  prosecuted  save 
at  a  much  greater  expense.  And  yet  both  have  been  zeal- 
ously cultivated,  especially  the  latter,  in  the  age  during 
which  metaphysics  have  been  neglected.  We  must  look 
for  some  other  cause;  nor  do  we  think  it  ought  to  be  diffi- 
cult to  find.  Metaphysical  pursuit  fell  into  abeyance  in 
this  country,  not  because  it  rested  on  a  mere  basis  of  ob- 
servation, not  experiment,  or  because  it  led  to  no  such  tan- 
gible results  as  the  pursuit  of  the  physical  sciences ;  but 
simply  in  consequence  of  a  thorough  divorce  which  took 
place,  through  the  labors  of  some  of  the  most  acute  and 
ingenious  metaphysicians  the  world  ever  saw,  between  the 
deductions  of  the  science  and  the  conclusions  of  common 
sense.  Reid,  who  raised  one  of  the  most  vigorous  protests 
ever  made  on  the  other  side,  has  well  remarked  that  "  it  is 


THE  IDEALISTIC   SCHOOL.  441 

genius,  and  not  the  want  of  it,  that  adulterates  philosophy, 
and  fills  it  with  error  and  false  theory."  And  certainly 
none  but  very  superior  men  could  have  run  their  science 
so  high  and  dry  upon  the  beach,  that,  with  all  the  interest 
which  attaches  to  its  objects,  men  have  preferred  leaving 
it  there  to  taking  the  trouble  of  getting  it  afloat  again. 
We  have  before  us  Brown's  "  Philosophy  of  the  Human 
Mind,"  open  at  one  of  the  most  ingenious  portions  of  the 
work,  that  on  the  phenomena  of  simple  suggestion,  and 
would  cite  one  of  his  views  by  way  of  example. 

Hume  had  previously  shown  that  there  is  no  other  visi- 
ble connection  between  cause  and  effect  than  that  of  inva- 
riable contiguity.  Cause  and  effect  were  Siamese  twins 
persistently  seen  together,  but  with  the  connecting  liga- 
ment, if  any  such  really  existed,  invariably  concealed.  And 
Brown,  following  close  in  the  wake  of  the  elder  dialectician, 
deliberately  erased  the  very  words  from  his  metaphysic 
vocabulary,  and  substituted  antecedent  and  consequent  in- 
stead. The  very  terms  cause  and  effect  vanished  from  his 
speculations,  and  with  the  terms  the  doctrine  they  in- 
volved ;  and  he  taught,  instead,  that  power  is  nothing  more 
than  the  relation  of  one  object  or  event  as  antecedent  to 
another  object  or  event,  its  immediate  and  invariable  con- 
sequent. Hume,  whose  vigorous  common-sense  was  ever 
raising  protests  against  his  ingenuities,  and  in  whose  ever- 
recurring  asides,  if  we  may  so  speak,  the  germ  of  the 
Scotch  philosophy  may  be  found,  had  stopped  short  when 
he  showed  that  no  known  argument  existed  by  which 
it  could  be  proved  that  effects  were  the  necessary  results 
of  causes,  and  that  it  could  only  be  shown  instead,  and 
thus  simply  as  a  matter  of  experience,  not  reason,  that 
they  were  always  associated  with  causes,  —  always  tagged 
to  them  in  the  exhibiting  areas  of  space  and  time,  as  the 
cart  is  tagged  to  the  horse,  or  as  a  train  of  railway  carriages 
is  tagged  to  the  engine.  And  in  summing  up  these  links 
of  the  associative  faculty,  which  keeps  up  the  ever-moving 
train  of  thinking  in  the  human  mind^  and  conBtitutes  one 


442  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

thought  master  of  the  ceremonies  in  introducing  another, 
he  enumerated,  as  distinct  and  separate,  first,  the  link  of 
contiguity  in  time  and  place  ;  and,  second,  the  link  of 
cause  and  effect.  And  well  he  might.  Let  a  misemployed 
ingenuity  compound  them  as  they  may,  they  are  wide  as 
the  poles  asunder.  They  are  separated  by  the  entire 
breadth  of  the  human  intellect ;  nay,  by  the  entire  breadth 
of  the  brute  and  human  intellect  united.  The  prevailing 
link  of  association  in  the  mind  of  the  highest  philosopher 
is  the  link  of  causation.  It  was  the  link  that  connected 
the  sublime  thoughts  of  Newton,  when,  sitting  in  his 
arbor,  he  saw  the  apple  fall  from  the  tree,  and  traced  in 
profound  meditation  the  effect  of  the  great  law  to  which  it 
owed  its  fall,  from  the  earth  to  the  moon,  and  from  thence 
to  the  sun  and  all  the  planets.  And,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  link  of  mere  contiguity  is  the  prevailing  link  in  those 
minds  in  which  intellect  is  feeblest;  it  was  the  link  on 
which  the  ideas  of  Dame  Quickly  were  suspended.  Her 
recollections  hung  upon  the  parcel-gilt  goblet,  the  sea-coal 
fire,  and  the  chance  visit  of  good  wife  Keech,  the  butcher's 
wife.  Nay,  even  the  inferior  animals  are  not  too  low  to 
be  under  its  influence.  The  horse  quickens  his  pace  when 
some  contiguous  object  reminds  him  of  the  neighborhood 
of  his  stable,  with  its  corn  and  hay ;  and  the  cat  learns  to 
associate  the  dinner-bell  with  the  dinner  which  it  precedes. 
And  yet  we  find  one  of  the  most  ingenious  of  the  idealistjo 
metaphysicians  fusing  these  two  widely-distant  links  of 
association  into  one,  —  the  prevailing  Newtonian  link  into 
the  prevailing  link  of  the  cat  and  horse ;  or,  as  he  himself 
expresses  it,  suppressing  the  link  of  causation  as  supei-fluous, 
and  leaving  instead,  in  conformity  with  his  adoption  of  the 
doctrine  of  Hume  (though  Hume  himself  avoided  the 
absurdity),  only  the  link  of  contiguity  in  time  and  space. 
The  "olde  jjolde-headed  manne,"  who  held  that  Tenter- 
den  steeple  was  the  cause  of  the  Goodwin  Sands,  because 
the  steeple  had  been  built  in  their  neighborhood,  he  said, 
just  immediately  before  they  began  to  form,  has  been  a 


THE   IDEALISTIC   SCHOOL.  443 

Standing  joke  in  English  literature  for  the  last  four  hun- 
dred years.  He  made  the  mistake  of  substituting  conti- 
guity in  time  and  place  for  causality,  and  has  become  a  jest 
ill  consequence.  But  what  shall  be  said  of  a  scheme  of 
metaphysics  that  does  deliberately  and  knowingly,  in  order 
to  preserve  the  consistency  of  a  foregone  conclusion,  what 
the  '•  polde-headed  manne"  did  in  his  simplicity  and  igno- 
rance ?  The  shrewd  natural  philosopher  who  saw  in  the 
slow  deposition  of  a  few  particles  of  earth  or  mud  in  still 
water,  formed  by  the  opposing  action  of  two  currents,  a 
future  sandbank,  and,  reasoning  from  cause  to  effect,  was 
reminded,  through  the  associative  link  thus  furnished,  of 
the  brown  wastes  of  the  Goodwin  Sands  strewed  with 
wrecks,  and  with  the  white  surf  beating  over  them,  and 
the  garrulous  old  woman  to  whom  a  print  of  Tenterden 
steeple  suggested  the  contiguous  sand-pit  along  whose 
margin  she  had  been  accustomed  to  pick  up  bits  of  broken 
planks  for  her  fire,  would  be,  on  the  showing  of  Dr.  Brown, 
under  the  influence  of  identical  suggestions  ;  for  contiguous 
cause  and  contiguous  steeple  he  has  virtually  placed  in  the 
same  category.  Is  there  ahy  wonder  that  a  busy  age 
should  leave  philosophers  who  argued  after  such  a  fashion, 
however  nice  their  genius  or  however  excessive  their  in- 
genuity, to  milk  their  rams  unheeded  (we  borrow  the  old 
illustration),  and  that  only  a  few  ill-employed  students 
should  be  found  idle  enough  to  hold  the  pail  ?  And  yet, 
such  is  no  extreme  illustration  of  the  idealistic  philosophy. 
It  is,  in  truth,  the  grand  objection  to  this  philosophy, 
that  it  sets  itself  in  direct  opposition  to  mind  engaged  in 
all  the  practical  walks.  Let  us  adduce  another  instance. 
It  is  one  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  an  ingenious  met- 
aphysician of  the  present  time,  a  principle  in  which  he  is 
virtually  at  one  with  Berkeley,  that  being  is  to  be  regarded 
as  tantamount  to  knowing ;  and  that  whatever  is  not  an 
object  of  consciousness  cannot  be  regarded  as  existent. 
Berkeley  held  that  the  absolute  existence  of  unthinking 
beings,  without  any  relation  to  their  being  perceived,  was 


444  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

wholly  unintelligible ;  and  we  at  once  grant  that  a  bar  of 
metal  kept  in  the  fire  until  it  glows  a  bright  red  has  no 
consciousness  of  redness,  that  the  caloric  with  which  it  is 
charged  has  no  sense  of  heat,  and,  further,  that  the  bar 
itself  has  no  feeling  whatever  of  expansion  or  solidity. 
Redness,  heat,  expansion,  and  the  idea  of  solidity  are  all 
impressions  of  sentient  existence,  —  accidents  or  qualities 
to  be  seen,  felt,  or  conceived  of.  "But  it  does  not  follow, 
that,  because  a  heated  bar  of  iron  is  not  conscious  of  heat, 
solidity,  or  redness,  it  is  not  therefore  a  heated  bar  of 
iron  ;  or  that  because  the  senses  can  testify  to  its  existence 
only  as  the  senses  of  the  living  can  testify  of  the  existence 
of  what  is  non-vital  and  non-sentient,  it  has  therefore  no 
existence  as  a  non-vital,  non-sentient  substance.  The  leap 
in  the  logic  seems  most  extraordinary,  from  the  fact  of  the 
non-sentient  character  of  the  heated  bar  to  the  non-exist- 
ence of  the  heated  bar.  And  yet  such  virtually  was 
the  conclusion  of  Berkeley.  "  Some  truths  are  so  near 
and  obvious  to  the  mind,"  he  said,  "  that  a  man  need 
only  open  his  eyes  to  see  them.  And  such,"  he  added, 
"I  take  this  important  one  to  be,  namely,  that  all  the 
choir  of  heaven  and  furniture  of  earth  —  in  a  word,  all 
those  bodies  which  compose  the  mighty  framework  of 
the  world  —  have  not  any  substance  without  a  mind  ;  that 
their  being  is  to  be  perceived  or  known  :  to  be  convinced 
of  which,  the  reader  need  only  reflect  and  try  to  separate 
in  his  own  thoughts  the  being  of  a  sensible  thing  from  its 
being  perceived."  In  this  last  sentence  the  sophism  seems 
to  lie.  It  confounds  conceiving  with  existing,  light  with 
eye  and  the  optic  nerve,  and  caloric  and  solidity  with  feel- 
ing and  the  tactile  sense.  It  would  date  the  beginning  of 
the  sun,  not  from  that  early  period  during  which  the  sun 
influenced  the  yearly  motions  of  our  planet,  but  from  the 
long  posterior  period  during  which  eyes  began  to  exist. 
And  such  essentially  is  the  philosophy  of  that  other  in- 
genious metaphysician  of  our  own  time  to  which  we  refer. 
"He"  also  "goes  bo  far  as  to  affirm,"  says  Mr;  Cairns, 


THE  IDEALISTIC   SCHOOL.  445 

iu  his  admirable  pamplilet,  "  tliat  thought  ana  existence 
are  identical.  Knowledge  of  existence,  he  says, — the 
apprehension  of  one's  self  and  other  things, —  is  alone  true 
existence."  Yes,  true  rational  existence  ;  but,  judged 
by  the  common-sense  of  mankind,  it  would  be  an  emi- 
nently irrational  existence  that  would  deny  the  reality  of 
existence  of  any  other  kind, — that  would  recognize  the 
bona  fide  being  of  an  Edinburgh  professor,  but  deny,  in  an 
argument  four  hundred  pages  long,  that  the  university  in 
which  he  lectured  had  any  being  whatever.  And  if,  while 
such  a  teacher  of  moral  philosophy,  seated  in  its  logic 
chair,  mayhap,  was  lecturing  in  one  room  on  the  general 
nonentity  of  things,  there  was  a  professor  of  natural 
science  demonstrating  in  another,  on  evidence  which  no 
ingenuous  mind  could  resist,  that,  during  immensely  pro- 
tracted periods,  this  old  earth  of  ours  had  moved  round 
the  sun  in  a  state  so  nearly  approximating  to  tlie  incan- 
descent, that  its  diurnal  raotion  propelled  outward  its  mat- 
ter at  the  meridian,  so  that  its  equatorial  diame'ter  still 
exceeds  its  polar  one,  in  consequence,  by  about  twenty-six 
miles,  —  that  for  periods  more  than  equally  protracted, 
when  it  became  a  home  of  sentient  existence,  its  highest 
creatures  were  in  succession  but  trilobites,  fishes,  reptiles, 
birds,  and  mammals,  and  that  not  until  comparatively  of 
yesterday  did  its  rational  existence  come  into  being,  — 
we  could  not  regard  such  neighborhood  as  other  than 
formidable  to  the  logician  to  whom  this  brief  latter  day 
would  be  the  only  one  recognized  as  a  reality.  It  would 
be  such  a  neighborhood  as  that  of  a  disciple  of  Newton 
busied  in  weighing  and  measuring  the  planets  or  calculat- 
ing the  return  of  a  comet  on  the  parallax  of  a  fixed  star,  to 
an  old  sophist  engaged  in  showing  his  lads,  on  what  he 
deemed  excellent  grounds,  that  if  a  tortoise  which  crept  a 
hundred  yards  in  an  hour  had  got  the  start  by  a  few  fur- 
rows' breadth  of  Achilles,  who  ran  a  mile  in  five  minutes, 
the  lieet  warrior  might  be  engaged  for  ever  and  ever  in 
vain  attempts  to  come  up  with  it. 
38 


446  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

One  of  two  things  would  of  necessity  occur  in  a  state 
of  matters  so  little  desirable,  —  either  the  pupils  of  the  lo- 
gician would  become  such  mere  triflers  in  argument  as  the 
Jack  Lizard  of  Steele's  essay,  who,  when  his  mother  scalded 
her  fingers,  angered  the  honest  woman  by  assuring  her 
there  was  no  such  thing  as  heat  in  boiling  water ;  or  they 
would  learn  .to  despise  both  their  professor  and  his  science. 
It  gives  us  sincere  pleasure  to  find  that  the  Edinburgh 
University  is  in  no  such  danger.  So  long  as  the  logio 
chair  remained  vacant,  we  purposely  abstained  from  making 
any  allusion  to  the  subject,  in  the  fear  that  any  expression 
of  opinion,  even  in  a  matter  so  impersonal  as  the  respective 
merits  of  two  schools  of  philosophy,  might  and  would  be 
misinterpreted.  But  we  are  in  no  such  danger  now;  and 
we  must  be  permitted  to  express  our  sincere  pleasure  that 
the  election  of  Tuesday  has  resulted  in  the  selection  of  an 
asserter  of  the  Scotch  school  of  philosophy  to  teach  in  the 
leading  Scotch  university.  Nor  are  we  influenced  by  any 
idle  preference  for  the  mere  name  Scotch.  We  know  not 
that  so  large  an  amount  of  ingenuity  has  yet  been  expended 
on  that  common-sense  school  of  which  Reid  was  the  founder, 
and  Beattie,  Hamilton,  and  Dugald  Stewart  the  exponents, 
as  on  the  antagonistic  school,  which  at  least  equally  dis- 
tinguished Scotchmen,  such  as  Hume  and  Thomas  Brown, 
have  illustrated  and  adorned.  George  Primrose,  in  the 
*' Vicar  of  Wakefield,"  found  that  the  best  things  remained 
to  be  said  on  the  wrong  side ;  and  so,  in  the  determination 
of  astonishing  the  world,  he  set  himself  to  dress  up  his 
three  paradoxes.  And,  unquestionably,  the  paradoxes  of 
the  idealistic  philosophy  have  been  admirably  dressed. 
But  the  Scotch  philosophy  has  at  least  this  grand  advan- 
tage over  the  opponent  school,  that  all  its  principles  and 
deductions  can  be  brought  into  harmony  with  those  of 
all  the  other  departments  of  science.  It  is  not  a  jarring 
discord  in  the  great  field  of  mental  exertion,  — a  false  bar, 
to  be  slurred  over  or  dropped  in  the  general  concert,  —  but 
a  wcll'toned  and  accordant  part,  consistent  with  the  bar- 


THE  IDEALISTIC   SCHOOL.  447 

mony  of  the  whole.  It  was  acknowledged  by  Hnme,  that 
It  was  only  in  solitude  and  retirement  that  he  could  yield 
any  assent  to  his  own  philosophy.  Nor  was  he  always 
true  to  it  even  in  solitude  ;  for  in  solitude  he  wrote  his 
admirable  political  essays,  and  his  "History  of  England." 
And  the  Scotch  school  is  simply  an  appeal,  on  philosophic 
grounds,  from  Hume  the  metaphysical  dreamer,  wrapped 
up  in  the  moonshine  of  sceptical  speculation,  to  Hume  the 
practical  politician  and  shrewd  historian.  And  we  know 
no  man  better  fitted  to  be  an  exponent  of  this  true  and 
solid  school,  or  whose  mind  partakes  more  of  the  character 
of  that  of  its  founder  Reid,  than  the  gentleman  on  whom 
the  choice  of  the  council  has  fallen.  We  trust  he  has  a 
long  career  of  usefulness  before  him  ;  and  have  every 
i-eason  to  hope  that  his  expositions  will  be  found  not 
unworthy  of  the  chair  of  Hamilton,  nor  of  a  i^hilosophy 
destined  ultimately,  we  cannot  doubt,  to  give  law  in  the 
regions  of  mental  philosophy,  at  a  time  when  the  inge- 
nuities of  its  opponents  shall  have  shared  the  fate  of  tho 
paradoxes  of  George  Primrose. 


448  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 


X. 

THE  POESY  OF  INTELLECT  AND  FANOT, 

It  has  been  well  said  of  singing  a  song,  —  in  reference, 
of  course,  to  the  extreme  commonness  of  musical  accom- 
lilishment  in  a  low  degree,  and  its  extreme  rarity  in  a  high 
one,  —  that  it  is  what  every  one  can  do,  and  not  one  in  a 
thousand  can  do  well.  A  musical  ear  is,  like  seeing  and 
hearing,  one  of  the  ordinary  gifts  of  nature,  just  because 
music  was  designed  to  be  one  of  the  ordinary  delights  of 
the  species  ;  but  while  the  class  capable  of  being  delighted 
is  a  very  large  one,  the  class  capable  of  delighting  is  one 
of  the  smallest.  A  not  large  apartment  could  contain  all 
the  first-class  singers  in  the  world ;  and,  mayhap,  judged 
by  men  of  the  highest  degree  of  taste,  a  closet  roomy 
enough  to  contain  Jenny  Lind  might  be  found  sufficient 
to  accommodate  for  a  time  its  pre'emineyit  musical  talent. 
And  it  is  so  as  certainly  with  poetry  as  with  music.  There 
are  a  few  men  in  every  community  wholly  destitute  of 
both  the  musical  and  the  poetic  sense,  just  as  in  every 
community  there  are  a  few  men  born  blind  and  a  few  more 
born  deaf;  but,  with  these  exceptions,  all  men  have  poetry 
and  music  in  them,  —  music  enough,  if  their  education  has 
not  been  wholly  neglected,  to  derive  pleasure  from  music, 
and  poetry  enough  to  derive  j^leasure  from  poetry.  And 
in  due  accoi'dance  with  this  fact,  we  find  that  in  what 
man's  Creator  appointed  from  the  beginning  to  be  the 
commonest  of  all  things,  religion,  he  has  made  large  use 
of  both.  Every  church  has  its  music,  and  a  large  portion 
of  the  divine  revelation  has  been  made  in  poetry.  But 
if  the  great  musicians  who  can  exquisitely  delight  be  few, 
the  great  poets  are  still  fewer.     There  is  but  one  Jenny 


THE   POESY   OF  INTELLECT  AND   FANCTT.  449 

Lincl  in  the  world  ;  but  then  the  world  has  not  had  a 
Shakspeare  for  the  last  two  hundred  and  forty  years  ;  and, 
though  greatly  more  than  a  century  has  elapsed  since 
Dryden  took  tale,  in  his  famous  opigram,  of  all  the  gi'eat 
epic  poets,  and  found  them  but  three,  no  one  has  since 
been  able  to  add  a  fourth  to  the  list.  Of  all  rare  and 
admirable  gifts,  the  poetic  faculty  in  the  high  and  perfect 
degree  is  at  once  the  most  admirable  and  the  most  rare. 
It  may,  however,  be  very  genuine  and  exquisite,  though 
not  full-orbed,  as  in  a  Homer  or  a  Milton.  Nature,  when 
she  makes  a  poet  of  the  first  class,  adds  a  powerful  imag- 
inative fiiculty,  and  a  fancy  of  great  brilliancy,  to  an  un- 
derstanding the  profoundest ;  she  takes  all  that  makes  the 
great  philosopher  and  all  that  is  peculiar  to  the  ti'ue  poet, 
and,  adding  them  together,  produces,  once  in  a  thousand 
years  or  so,  one  of  her  fully-rounded  and  perfect  intellects. 
But  a  man  may  have  much  though  he  may  not  have  all ; 
nay,  a  very  few  faculties,  if  of  a  rare  order  and  Avisely 
employed,  may  well  excite  admiration  and  wonder.  Tan- 
nahill  could  achieve  only  a  song  ;  but  as  the  songs  which 
he  did  achieve  were  very  genuine  ones,  with  the  true 
faculty  in  them,  Scotland  seems  to  be  in  no  danger  of 
forgetting  them.  Berangei-,  the  greatest  of  living  song- 
writers, is  a  man  of  similar  faculty  with  Tannahill.  He  is 
known  as  a  song-writer,  and  as  that  only ;  but  never  had 
France  such  songs  before,  and  France  knows  how  to  value 
them.  The  one  thing  which  Beranger  can  do,  no  other 
man  can  do  equally  well ;  and  not  a  few  of  the  fairest 
names  among  the  poets  of  antiquity  are  those  of  poets 
equally  limited,  apparently,  in  what  they  were  fitted  to 
produce,  but  also  equally  exquisite  in  the  quality  of  their 
productions.  Anacrcon  has  left  only  little  odes,  and  Pin- 
dar only  great  ones ;  but  scholars  tell  us  that  it  is  almost 
worth  while  acquiring  Greek  in  oi'der  to  be  able  to  read 
them.  Ancient  Rome  has  immortalized  her  Lucretius  for 
his  single  faculty  of  transmuting  not  very  good  philosophy 
into  very  noble  verse,  and  modern  Italy  her  Petrai'ch  for 
38* 


450  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

his  rar3  skill  in  tuining  a  sonnet.  In  short,  almost  all  the 
jjoets  of  the  second  order  have  been  poets,  not  full-orbed 
in  their  brightness,  like  the  sun  or  the  great  outer  planets 
of  the  system,  but,  like  the  inner  planets,  and  like  the 
moon  ere  her  full  term  has  come,  mere  segments  and  cres- 
cents of  glory. 

There  can  be  no  very  adequate  division  made  of  these 
partially  orbed  poets  ;  and  yet  they  naturally  enough 
divide  into  two  classes,  —  a  class  in  whom  intellect  is 
comparatively  strong  and  genius  weak,  and,  vice  versa-,  a 
class  in  whom  intellect  is  comparatively  weak  and  genius 
strong.  Pure  intellect  dissociated  from  the  poetic  faculty 
can  of  course  accomplish  but  little  in  the  fields  of  poesy. 
And  yet,  such  is  the  power  of  determination,  diligence, 
and  high  culture,  that  a  little  it  has  accomplished.  If  it 
has  not  produced  brilliant  poems,  it  has  at  least  produced 
pointed  stanzas  and  pleasing  stories,  narrated  in  easy  and 
elegant  verse.  We  greatly  question  whether  Hayley  was 
born  a  poet ;  but  his  "  Triumphs  of  Temper,"  though  they 
triumphed  over  the  temper  of  Byron,  certainly  did  not  tri- 
umph over  ours.  On  the  contrary,  we  found  the  piece,  in 
its  character  as  a  metrical  tale,  at  least  as  readable  as  if  it 
had  been  written  in  good  prose ;  and  there  are  even  some 
of  its  stanzas  which  we  still  remember.  The  few  lines  in 
which  the  father  of  the  heroine  is  described  may  not  be 
poetry,  but  they  are  nearly  as  good  as  if  they  were.  There 
are  not  many  characters  better  hit  off  in  a  few  lines,  in  the 
whole  round  of  English  verse,  than  that  of 

"The  good  Sir  Gilbert,  to  his  country  true, 
A  faithful  Whig,  who,  zealous  for  the  state, 
In  freedom's  service  led  the  loud  debate; 
Yet  eveiy  day,  by  transmutation  rare. 
Turned  to  a  Tory  in  his  elbow-chair. 
And  made  his  daughter  pay,  howe'er  absurd. 
Passive  obedience  to  his  sovereign  word." 

But  of  all  the  achievements  of  the  prose  men  in  the  prov- 
ince of  verse,  that  of  Swift  is  the  greatest.    Dry  den  was 


THE  POESY   OP  INTELLECT  AND   FANCY.  451 

quite  in  the  right  when  he  said  that  the  young  clergyman 
was  no  poet ;  and  yet  the  "  no  poet "  has  so  fixed  his  name 
in  the  poesy  of  the  country  that  in  no  general  biography 
of  the  English  poets  do  we  find  his  life  omitted,  and  in 
no  general  collection  of  English  poetry  do  we  fail  to  find 
his  verses.  The  works  of  a  class  of  writers  not  certainly 
so  devoid  of  poetiy  as  Swift  and  Hayley,  but  who  were 
rather  men  of  fine  taste  and  vigorous  intellect  than  of 
high  poetic  genius,  represent  in  large  measure  the  common 
staple  of  English  poesy  during  the  earlier  and  middle  part 
of  the  last  century.  Not  only  the  Brooraes,  Fentons,  and 
Lytteltons,  but  even  the  Armstrongs  and  Akensides,  be- 
longed to  this  class.  The  men  who  assisted  Pope  in  trans- 
lating the  "  Odyssey  ;  "  the  man  who  wrote  that  work 
on  the  Conversion  of  St.  Paul  which  still  maintains  its 
place  in  what  may  be  termed  the  higher  literature  of 
the  "Evidences;"  in  especial,  the  men  who  produced  the 
"Pleasures  of  the  Imagination"  and  the  "Art  of  Pre- 
serving Health," —  had  all  very  vigorous  minds.  Akensido 
would  have  made  a  first-class  metaphysical  professor,  par- 
ticularly in  the  aesthetic  department ;  and  Armstrong  could 
have  effectually  grappled  Avith  very  severe  and  rugged 
subjects ;  but  the  poetic  faculty  that  was  in  them  was  very 
subordinate  to  their  intellect.  It  was  true  so  far  as  it  ex- 
tended, but  embroidered  only  thinly  and  in  a  threadbare 
way  the  strong  tissue  of  their  thinking.  And  yet  both  the 
"  Art  of  Preserving  Health "  and  the  "  Pleasures  of  the 
Imagination"  gire  noble  poems.  The  latter  is  the  better 
known  of  the  two :  Thomas  Brown  used  to  repeat  almost  the 
whole  of  it  every  season  in  his  class,  as  at  once  good  poetry 
and  good  metaphysics.  But  the  former  deserves  to  be 
known  as  well.  The  man  who  could  transmute  such  a 
subject  into  passable  poetry,  and  render  his  composition 
readable  as  a  whole,  —  and  much  of  the  poetry  is  more 
than  passable,  and  the  piece  as  a  whole  eminently  reada- 
ble, —  must  be  regarded  as  having  accomplished  no  ordi- 
nary achievement.    It  is,  however,  from  the  strong  intellect 


452  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

displayed  in  the  staple  texture  of  the  piece,  rather  tLan 
from  its  poetic  embroidery,  that  it  derives  its  merit. 

The  second  class  —  the  class  composed  of  men  whoso 
poetic  genius  overrode  their  intellect  —  is  not  so  largely 
represented  in  English  poetry  as  the  other.  It  may  be 
Bafely  said,  however,  that  in  the  writings  of  men  of  the 
last  century,  such  as  Collins,  Chatterton  in  his  Rowley 
poems,  and  perhaps  Meikle,  we  find  more  of  poetry  than 
of  pure  intellect ;  and  in  writings  of  men  of  the  present 
century,  such  as  those  of  Keats,  Wilson,  and  perhaps 
Leigh  Hunt,  we  find  much  more.  In  the  writings  of  Wil- 
son there  is  often  scarce  tissue  enough  to  support  the  load 
of  gorgeous  embroidery  that  mantles  over  it.  In  especial 
in  his  "Isle  of  Palms"  do  we  find  the  balance  of  the 
poetry  preponderately  cast  against  the  intellect.  It  is,  as 
a  poem,  in  every  respect  the  antipodes  of  the  "  Art  of 
Preserving  Health."  In  Keats  the  preponderance  is  also 
very  marked.  What  a  gorgeous  gallery  of  poetic  pictures 
that  "Eve  of  St.  Agnes"  forms,  and  yet  how  slim  the  tis- 
sue that  lies  below  !  How  thin  the  canvas  on  which  the 
whole  is  painted  !  For  vigorous  sense,  one  deep-thoughted 
couplet  of  Dryden  would  make  the  whole  kick  the  beam. 
And  yet  what  can  be  more  exquisite  in  their  way  than 
those  pictures  of  the  young  poet !  Even  the  old  worn-out 
gods  of  Grecian  mythology  become  life-like  when  he  draws 
them.  They  revive  in  his  hands,  and  become  vital  once 
more.  In  "  Rimini "  we  detect  a  similar  faculty.  A  man 
of  profound,  nay,  of  but  rather  strong  intellect,  would 
scarce  have  chosen  such  a  repulsive  story  for  poetic  adorn- 
ment ;  but,  once  chosen,  only  a  true  poet  could  have 
adorned  it  so  well. 

Such  are  specimens  of  the  class  of  poets  which  we  would 
set  off  against  that  to  which  the  Lytteltons,  Akensides, 
and  Armstrongs  belonged,  and  at  whose  head  Pope  and 
Dryden  took  their  stand.  And  it  is  a  class  that,  compar- 
atively at  least, —  the  sum  total  of  the  poetic  stock  taken 
into  account,  —is  largely  represented  at  the  present  time. 


THE  POESY   OP  INTELLECT  AND   FANCY.  453 

We  shall  not  repeat  the  nickname  which  has  been  era- 
ployed  to  designate  them  ;  for,  believing,  whatever  may 
be  their  occasional  aberrations,  that  they  possess  "  the  vis- 
ion and  the  faculty  divine,"  we  shall  not  permit  ourselves 
to  speak  other  than  respectfully  of  them.  We  could  fliin 
wish  that  they  oftener  rejected  first  thoughts,  and  waited 
for  those  second  ones  which,  according  to  Bacon,  are 
wiser:  we  could  fain  wish  that  what  was  said  of  Dryden  — 

"  Who  either  knew  not,  or  forgot, 
That  greatest  art,  —  the  art  to  blot," — 

could  not  be  said  so  decidedly  of  them.  But  we  must  not 
forget  that  their  compositions,  though  not  without  fault 
in  their  character  as  wholes,  and  often  primed  in,  as  a 
painter  might  say,  on  too  thin  a  groundwork,  contain  some 
of  the  most  brilliant  passages  in  the  wide  range  of  modern 
poetry.  To  this  school  Gerald  Massey,  a  name  already 
familiar  to  most  of  our  readers,  has  been  held  to  belong. 
He  has  less  of  its  peculiar  faults,  however,  than  any  of  its 
other  members,  with  certainly  not  less  of  its  peculiar  beau- 
ties. With  all  the  marked  individuality  of  original  genius, 
he  reminds  us  more  of  Keats  than  of  any  other  English 
poet ;  but  with  the  same  rare  perception  of  external  beauty, 
and  occasionally  the  same  too  extreme  devotion  to  it,  he 
adds  a  lyrical  power  and  a  depth  of  feeling  which  Keats 
did  not  possess.  And  from  these  circumstances  we  augur 
well  of  his  future.  It  is  ever  the  tendency  of  genuine  feel- 
ing to  pass  from  the  sui-f^xce  of  nature  to  its  depths ;  and 
though,  as  we  see  exemplified  in  the  songs  of  Burns,  tliu 
true  lyrist  may  find  in  description  adequate  employment 
for  his  peculiar  powers,  it  is  always  in  preparation  for  some 
burst  of  sentiment,  or  by  way  of  garnishing  to  some  strik- 
ing thought.  Mr.  Massey's  new  poem  "  Craigcrook  Castle " 
furnishes  admirable  illustrations  of  the  various  phases  of 
his  genius.  The  plan  of  the  work  is  one  of  which  our 
literature  has  furnished  many  examples,  from  the  times  of 
the  "  Canterbury  Tales  "  down  to  those  of  the  "  Queen's 


454  LITEKARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

Wake,"  and  which  is  taken  up  year  after  year  in  the  Christ- 
mas stories  of  the  writers  connected  with  the  "Household 
Words."  There  is  a  meeting  of  friends  at  the  hospitable 
board,  over  which  Jeffrey  once  presided,  and  at  which  a 
man  of  similar  literary  tastes  and  feelings  presides  now ; 
and  each  guest,  in  passing  the  evening,  brings  forward  his 
contribution  of  song  or  story.  The  introduction,  with 
none  of  the  cadences  of  Keats,  reminds  us  in  every  line  of 
that  poet's  delight  in  sensuous  imagery  and  influences,  and 
of  the  crust  of  rich  thought,  if  we  may  so  express  ourselves, 
that  mantled  over  the  surface  of  his  poetry.  The  advent 
of  tlie  morning  at  Craigcrook  we  find  thus  described :  — 

"  The  meek  and  melting  amethyst  of  dawn 

Blushed  o'er  the  blue  hills  in  the  ring  o'  the  world; 

Up  purple  twilights  come  the  shining  sea 

Of  sunlight  breaking  in  a  silent  surge, 

Whence  morning,  like  the  birth  of  beauty,  rose; 

While  at  a  rosy  touch,  the  clouds,  that  lay 

In  sullen  pui-ples  round  the  hills  of  Fife, 

Adown  her  pathway  spread  their  paths  of  gold. 
*  *  *  * 

"  Sweet  lilies  of  the  valley,  tremulous  fair. 

Peep  through  their  curtains,  clasped  with  diamond  dew 

By  fairy  jeweller's  working  while  they  slept; 

The  arch  laburnum  droops  her  budding  gold 

From  emerald  fingers  with  such  taking  grace; 

The  fuchsia  fans  her  fairy  chandclry, 

And  flowering  current  crimsons  the  green  gloom; 

The  pansies,  pretty  little  puritans, 

Come  peering  up  with  merry,  elvish  eyes; 

At  summer's  call  the  lih'  is  alight; 

Wallflowers  in  fragrance  bum  themselves  away 

With  the  sweet  season  on  her  precious  pyre; 

Pure  passionate  aromas  of  the  rose, 

And  purple  perfume  of  the  hyacinth, 

Come  like  a  color  through  the  golden  day." 

There  is  much  of  Keats  in  this  passage,  and  yet  Keats 
was  not  in  the  mind  of  the  writer:  the  similarity  of  result 
is  an  effect,  evidently,  not  of  imitation,  but  of  a  similarity 


THE  POESY  OF  INTELLECT  AND   FANCY.  455 

of  genius.  The  following  passage,  much  in  the  same  vein, 
has  been  greatly  criticized,  and  yet  none  but  a  true  poet 
could  have  produced  it.  It  is  a  remarkable  picture  of  a 
remarkable  man,  with  points  about  it  which  might  easily 
be  laid  hold  of  in  a  mocking  spirit,  but  which  impart  not 
a  little  of  its  character  and  individuality  to  the  portrait. 
We  quote  from  the  second  edition  :  — 

"  We  gathered  all  within  the  house,  and  there 
Shook  off  the  purple  silence  of  the  night. 
Cried  one,  Come,  let  us  a  symposium  hold. 
And  each  one  to  the  banquet  bring  their  best 
In  song  or  story:  all  shall  play  a  part. 
So,  for  a  leader  simple  and  grand,  we  chose 
Oar  miraclc-workcr  in  midwifery,  —  he 
Who  wrestled  with  the  fiend  of  corporal  pain. 
And  stands  above  the  writhing  agony 
Like  Michael  with  the  dragon  'ncath  his  heel; 
Who  is  in  soul  Love  riding  on  a  lion; 
In  body,  a  Bacchus  crowned  with  the  head  of  Jove : 
The  keen  life  looks  out  in  his  lighted  face 
So  fulgent,  that  the  gazer  brightens  too; 
He  bravely  towers  above  our  fume  and  fret, 
Lilve  the  old  hills,  whose  feet  are  in  the  surge. 
And  on  their  lifted  brows  the  eternal  calm; 
For  he  is  one  of  those  prophetic  spirits 
That,  ere  the  world's  night,  dreams  of  things  to  come." 

There  may  be  faults  here,  as  the  reviewers  suggest,  — 
nay,  it  may  be  all  fault;  but  it  certainly  does  remind  us  of 
those  aberrations  of  genius  specially  described  by  the  poet 
as  "glorious  faults,  that  critics  dare  not  mend."  In  illus- 
tration of  the  lyrical  spirit  and  deep  tenderness  of  Mr. 
Massey,  we  give  the  following  extracts  from  a  series  of 
simple  triplets  on  the  death  of  a  beloved  child  :  — 

"  Within  a  mile  of  Edinburgh  town 
We  laid  our  little  darling  down,  —     i  >/" 
Our  first  seed  in  "  God's  acre  "  sowic 

"The  city  looketh  solemn  and  sweet; 
It  bares  a  gentle  brow  to  greet 
The  mourners  mourning  at  its  feet. 


456  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

"The  sea  of  human  life  breaks  round 
This  shore  o'  the  dead  with  softened  soundj 
Wild  flowei-s  climb  each  mossy  mound 
To  place  in  resting  hands  their  palm, 
And  breathe  their  beauty,  bloom,  and  balm. 
Folding  the  dead  in  fragrant  calm. 

*  *  *  m 
"  Lone  mother,  at  the  darlt  grave-door 

She  kneeleth,  pleading  o'er  and  o'er; 
But  it  is  shut  for  evermore. 

"  She  toileth  on  —  the  moumfulest  thing  — 
At  the  vam  task  of  emptying 
The  cistern  where  the  salt  tears  spring. 

*  *  *  * 
"  The  spirit  of  life  may  leap  above, 

But  in  that  grave  her  prisoned  dove 
Lies  cold  to  th'  warm  embrace  of  love; 

"  And  dark  though  all  the  world  is  bright. 
And  lonely  with  a  city  in  sight. 
And  desolate  in  the  rainy  night. 

"Ah,  God  I  when  in  the  glad  life-cup 
The  face  of  Death  swims  darkly  up. 
The  crowning  flower  is  sure  to  droop  I 

"  And  so  we  laid  our  darling  down, 
When  summer's  cheek  grew  ripely  brown; 
And  still,  though  grief  has  milder  grown. 
Unto  the  stranger's  land  we  cleave. 
Like  some  poor  birds  that  grieve  and  grieve 
Bound  the  robbed  nest,  so  loth  to  leave." 

There  are  one  or  two  obscurities  of  figure  here  that  crave 
a  second  thought  to  unlock  them ;  but  nothing  can  be  more 
sadly  tender  than  the  whole,  and  there  is  poetry  in  every 
stanza.  Gerald  Massey  is  still  a  young  man,  and  much  of 
his  time  in  the  past  must  have  been  spent  in  shaking  off  the 
stiff  soil  that  clogs  round  for  a  time  the  thoughts  and  expres- 
sions of  untutored  genius.  A  man  still  under  thirty,  who 
never  attended  any  school  save  a  penny  one  for  a  brief 
period,  and  who  at  eight  yeai's  of  age  was  sent  to  toil  in  a 


THE  UNTAUGHT   POETS.  457 

Bilk  manufactory  from  five  o'clock  in  the  morning  till  half- 
past  six  at  night,  may  well  be  regarded  as  still  but  partially 
developed ;  and  we  are  convinced  the  woi'ld  has  not  yet 
seen  his  best.  He  has  but  to  give  his  intellect  as  full  scope 
as  his  fancy  and  imagination,  and  to  bestow  upon  his  pieces 
that  elaboration  and  care  which  high  excellence  demands 
from  even  the  happiest  genius,  in  order  to  become  one  of 
the  enduring  lights  of  British  song. 


XI. 

THE  UNTAUGHT  POETS. 

In  more  than  one  respect  the  untaught  poets  of  England 
have  fared  better  than  those  of  our  own  country.  In  the 
first  place,  Southey,  perhaps  the  raciest  English  writer  of 
liis  day,  wrote  their  history,  and  made  not  a  few  of  them 
known  who  had  succeeded  but  indifierently  in  making 
known  themselves  ;  and  in  the  second,  we  find  from  his  nar- 
ratives that,  with  few  exceptions,  their  poetry  served  them 
as  a  sort  of  stepping-stone,  by  which  they  escaped  upwards 
from  the  condition  of  hard  labor  and  obscurity,  to  which 
they  seemed  born,  into  a  sphere  of  comparative  afiiuence 
and  comfort.  For  one  of  the  first  of  their  number,  John 
Taylor,  the  "Water  Poet,"  —  a  man  who  was  certainly 
not  a  water-poet  in  the  teetotal  sense,  —  nothing  could 
have  been  done.  He  was  a  bold,  rough,  roystering  fellow, 
quite  as  famous  for  his  feats  and  wagers  as  for  his  rhymes. 
On  one  occasion  he  navigated  his  cockle-shell  of  a  wherry 
all  the  v/ay  from  London  Bridge  to  York  ;  on  another,  he 
rowed  it  across  the  German  Sea  from  London  to  Ham- 
burg; on  yet  another,  in  1618,  he  undertook  to  travel 
from  London  to  Edinburgh,  and  thence  into  the  Highlands, 
39 


458  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

"  not  carrying  money  to  or  fro,  neither  begging,  boiTowing, 
nor  asking  meat,  drink,  or  lodging; "  and  what  he  under- 
took to  do  he  did,  and  bequeathed  to  us,  in  his  history  of 
his  "Pennyless  Pilgrimage,"  the  best  account  extant  of 
hunting  in  the  Highlands  by  the  "  Tinckhell,"  and  of  the 
"  wolves  and  wild  horses  "  which,  at  even  that  compara- 
tively recent  period,  abounded  in  the  ruder  districts  of 
Scotland.  It  would  have  been  scarce  possible  to  elevate 
such  a  man,  even  had  a  very  generous  patronage  been  the 
order  of  the  age ;  but  Taylor  had  all  his  days  enough  to 
eat  and  drink,  and  died  the  keeper  of  a  thriving  public 
house,  much  frequented,  during  the  times  of  the  Common- 
wealth, by  the  cavaliers.  And  no  sooner  did  men  of  this 
class  arise,  to  whom  a  judicious  patronage  could  be  ex' 
tended,  than  they  were  admitted  to  its  benefits.  Stephen 
Dick,  the  "  Thresher,"  was  rather  a  small  poet,  but  he  was 
an  amiable  and  conscientious  man ;  and,  mainly  through 
the  exertions  of  the  Rev,  Mr.  Spence,  Professor  of  Poetry 
in  the  University  of  Oxford,  he  obtained  orders  in  the 
English  Church,  and  was  preferred  to  a  not  uncomfortable 
living.  Dodsley,  still  known  by  his  "  King  and  Miller  of 
Mansfield,"  was  elevated,  through  the  exercise  of  a  genial 
patronage,  from  his  original  place  as  a  table-boy,  to  be  one 
of  the  most  respectable  London  booksellers  of  his  day, — 
a  man  whose  name  still  imparts  a  recognizable  bibliograph- 
ical value  to  the  works  to  which  it  is  attached.  The  shoe- 
maker Woodhouse,  and  the  tobacco-pipe-maker  Bryant, 
were  also  fortunate  in  their  patrons ;  Gifford  was  eminently 
BO ;  all  seems  to  have  been  done  for  Ann  Yearsley,  the  poeti- 
cal milkwoman,  that  her  own  unhappy  temper  allowed  ;  and 
in  our  own  times,  John  Clare  was  kindly  and  liberally 
dealt  with  ;  though  not  more  in  his  case  than  in  that  of 
his  predecessor  Duck  could  the  degree  of  favor  with  which 
he  was  treated  ward  off  the  cruel  mental  malady  that 
darkened  his  latter  years.  With,  in  short,  the  exception 
of  one  of  the  best,  and  in  every  respect  most  meritorious 
and  deserving  of  the  class,  —  poor  Robert  Bloomfield,  who 


THE  UNTAUGHT  POETS.  459 

was  suffered  to  die  in  great  poverty,  —  we  know  not  a 
single  untaught  English  poet  who  gave  evidence  of  the 
possession  of  the  true  faculty,  however  narrow  its  scope, 
and  had  at  the  same  time  character  enough  to  be  capable 
of  being  benefited  by  a  liberal  patronage,  that  failed  to  re- 
ceive the  encouragement  which  he  deserved.  And  we 
find  Southey  laying  down  very  admirably,  in  combating  a 
remark  of  the  elder  Sheridan,  —  whom  he  terms  an  ill- 
natured,  perverse  man,  —  the  generous  principle  on  which 
this  had  been  done.  "  Wonder,"  says  the  author  of  the 
first  "  Pronouncing  Dictionary,"  —  a  man  whom  the 
greater  lexicographer,  Johnson,  described  as  not  only  nat- 
urally dull,  but  as  also  rendered,  through  dint  of  immense 
effort  on  his  own  part,  vastly  duller  than  nature  had  made 
him,  —  "  wonder,  usually  accompanied  by  a  bad  taste, 
looks  only  for  what  is  uncommon ;  and  if  a  work  comes 
out  under  the  name  of  a  thresher,  a  bricklayer,  a  milkwo- 
man,  or  a  lord,  it  is  sure  to  be  eagerly  sought  aflerby  the 
million."  "  Persons  of  quality,"  remarks  the  poet-laureate, 
"  require  no  defence  when  they  appear  as  authors  in  these 
days ;  and,  indeed,  as  mean  a  spirit  may  be  shown  in  tra- 
ducing a  book  because  it  is  written  by  a  lord,  as  in  extolling 
it  beyond  its  deserts  for  the  same  reason.  But  when  we 
are  told  that  the  thresher,^the  milkwoman,  and  the  tobac- 
co-pipe-maker did  not  deserve  the  patronage  they  found, 
when  it  is  laid  down  as  a  maxim  of  philosophical  criti- 
cism that  poetry  ought  never  to  be  encouraged  unless 
it  is  excellent  in  its  kind ;  that  it  is  an  art  in  which  infe- 
rior execution  is  not  to  be  tolerated,  a  luxury,  and  must 
therefore  be  rejected  unless  it  is  of  the  very  best, — 
such  reasoning  may  be  addressed  with  success  to  cockered 
and  sickly  intellects,  but  it  will  never  impose  upon  a 
healthy  understanding,  a  generous  spirit,  or  a  good  man. 
....  If  the  poet  be  a  good  and  amiable  man,"  continues 
Southey,  "he  will  be  both  the  better  and  the  happier 
for  writing  verses.  '  Poetry,'  says  Landon,  '  opens  many 
sources  of  tenderness  that  lie  forever  in  the  rock  without 


460  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

it The.  benevolent  persons  who  patronized  Stephen 

Duck  did  it,  not  with  the  hope  of  rearing  a  great  poet, 
but  for  the  sake  of  placing  a  worthy  man  in  a  station 
more  suited  to  his  intellectual  endowments  than  that  in 
which  be  was  born.  Bryant  was  befriended  in  a  manner 
not  dissimilar,  for  the  same  reason.  In  the  case  of  Wood- 
house  and  Ann  Yearsley  the  intention  was  to  better  their 
condition  in  their  own  way  of  life.  And  the  Woodstock 
shoemaker  was  chiefly  indebted  for  the  patronage  which 
he  received  to  Thomas  Warton's  good  nature ;  for  my 
predecessor  Warton  was  the  best-natured  man  that  ever 
wore  such  a  wig."  There  is  the  true  English  generosity  of 
sentiment  here,  —  a  generosity  which,  in  such  well-known 
cases  as  that  of  Henry  Kirke  White  and  John  Jones,  was 
actually  exemplified  by  Southey  himself;  and  his  remark 
regarding  the  humanizing  influence  of  poesy  on  even  its 
humbler  cultivators  will  scarce  fail  to  remind  some  of  our 
readisrs  of  the  still  happier  one  which  our  countryman 
Mackenzie  puts  into  the  mouth  of  "  old  Ben  Silton." 
"  There  is  at  least,"  said  the  stranger,  "  one  advantage  in 
the  poetical  inclination,  that  is  an  incentive  to  philan- 
thropy. There  is  a  certain  poetic  ground  on  which  a  man 
cannot  tread  without  feelings  that  enlarge  the  heart.  The 
causes  of  human  depravity  vanish  before  the  romantic  en- 
thusiasm he  professes ;  and  many  who  are  not  able  to 
reach  the  Parnassian  heights  may  yet  approach  so  near  as 
to  be  bettered  by  the  air  of  the  climate." 

The  untaught  poets  of  Scotland  have  fared  much  more 
hardly  than  those  of  the  sister  country.  Some  of  them 
forced  their  way  through  life  simply  as  energetic,  vigorous 
men.  Allan  Ramsay  throve  as  a  tradesman,  and  built  for 
himself  a  house  in  Edinburgh,  which  continues  to  attract 
the  eye  of  the  stranger  by  its  picturesqueness,  and  which 
few  literary  men  of  the  present  day  could  afford  to  pur- 
chase. And  Falconer,  though  he  died  a  sailor's  death  in 
the  full  vigor  of  his  prime,  had  first  risen  from  the  fore- 
castle to  the  quarter-deck  as  a  bold  and  skilful  seaman. 


THE  UNTAUGHT  POETS.  461 

Allan  Cunningham,  too,  made  hia  way  good  as  a  hard- 
working business  man.  But,  if  unable  to  help  themselves 
after  the  manner  of  Falconer,  Cunningham,  and  Ramsay, 
the  untaught  poets  of  Scotland  received  but  little  help 
Irom  the  })atronage  of  their  countrymen.  The  aristocracy 
of  Scotland  made  Burns  a  ganger,  and  employed  one  of 
the  noblest  intellects  which  his  country  ever  produced  in 
"searching,"  as  he  himself  in  bitter  mirth  expressed  it, 
"  auld  wives'  barrels."  And  neither  Alexander  Wilson  nor 
poor  Tannahill  ever  received  even  the  miserable  measure 
of  patronage  that  gave  Burns  seventy  pounds  a  year,  and 
demanded,  in  return,  that  he  should  waste  three  fourths 
of  his  time  in  a  half-reputable  and  uncongenial  employ- 
ment. Poor  Tannahill,  the  harmless,  the  gentle,  the  affec- 
tionate, was  left  to  perish  unhappily  when  he  was  but 
little  turned  of  thirty  ;  and  Wilson,  a  stronger,  though 
not  a  finer  spirit,  quitted  his  country  in  disgust,  and  made 
himself  an  enduring  fame  in  the  United  States  as  a  nat- 
uralist, by  the  great  work  which  Prince  Charles  Lucien 
Bonaparte  did  not  disdain  to  complete.  We  cannot  point 
to  a  single  untaught  poet  in  the  literary  history  of  our 
country  that  ever  enjoyed  a  pension.  Pensions  were  re- 
served for  the  friends  and  relatives  of  the  statesmen  to 
whom  Toryism  in  Edinburgh  and  elsewhere  built  senseless 
columns.  But  though  the  untaught  poets  of  Scotland 
fared  thus  differently  from  those  of  England,  it  was  cer- 
tainly not  because  they  deserved  less.  On  the  contrary, 
if  we  except  Shakspeare,  —  one  of  those  extraordinary 
minds  that,  according  to  Johnson,  "bid  help  and  hiuder- 
ance  alike  vanish  before  them,"  —  our  untaught  Scotchmen 
have  been  men  of  larger  calibre,  and  greater  masters  of 
the  lyre,  than  the  corresponding  class  in  England.  Pass- 
ing over  the  John  Taylors  and  Ned  Wai'ds  as  deserving 
of  no  special  remark,  we  would  stake  Ramsay  with  his 
"  Gentle  Shepherd  "  against  his  brother  poet  and  brother 
bookseller  Dodsley  with  his  "  Miller  of  Mansfield  "  and  his 
"  Toy  Shop,"  taking  odds  of  ten  to  one  any  day  ;  Bloom- 
39* 


462  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

field,  though  a  worthy  personage,  and  possessed  of  the 
true  faculty,  was  a  small  man  compared  with  Robert 
Burns ;  and  the  Ducks,  Woodhouses,  Bryants,  and  Ben- 
nets  were  slim  and  stunted  of  stature  compared  with  the 
Falconers,  Tannahills,  Wilsons,  Allan  Cunninghams,  and 
Hoggs.  In  this,  as  in  other  walks,  though  English  genius 
of  the  highest  class  takes  the  first  place  in  the  literature 
of  the  world,  its  genius  of  the  second  class  fails  to  equal 
second-class  genius  in  Scotland.  There  have  been  poets 
among  our  countrymen  whose  lives  no  one  thinks  of  writ- 
ing, and  whose  verses  have  failed  to  attract  any  very  large 
share  of  notice  who  possessed  powera  greatly  superior  to 
most  of  the  authors  enumerated  by  Southey  in  his  Essay 
on  the  Uneducated  Poets,  and  who,  had  they  written  in 
England,  would  have  been  extensively  known.  To  one 
of  these,  still  among  us,  we  find  pleasing  reference  made 
in  the  correspondence  of  Jeffrey.  "  The  greater  part  of 
your  poems,"  we  find  him  saying,  in  a  note  to  the  self- 
taught  poet  Alexander  Maclagan,  "  I  have  perused  with 
singular  gratification.  I  can  remember  when  the  appear- 
ance of  such  a  work  would  have  produced  a  great  sensa- 
tion, and  secured  to  its  author  both  distinction  and  more 
solid  advantages."  And  in  another  note,  written  in  ref- 
erence chiefly  to  a  second  and  enlarged  edition  of  Mr. 
Maclagan's  poems,  and  which  occurs  in  the  volume  of 
"  Correspondence,"  edited  by  Lord  Cockburn,  we  find  the 
distinguished  critic  specifying  the  pieces  which  pleased  him 
most.  "  I  have  already,"  says  his  lordship,  "  read  all  [the 
poems]  on  the  slips,  and  think  them,  on  the  whole,  fully 
equal  to  those  in  the  former  volume.  I  am  most  pleased, 
I  believe,  with  that  which  you  have  entitled  'Sisters' 
Love,'  which  is  at  once  very  touching,  very  graphic,  and 
very  elegant.  Your  *  Summer  Sketches  '  have  beautiful 
passages  in  all  of  them,  and  a  pervading  joyousness  and 
kindliness  of  feeling,  as  well  as  a  vein  of  grateful  devotion, 
which  must  recommend  them  to  all  good  minds.  The 
'  Scorched  Flowei-s,'  I  thought  the  most  picturesque." 


THE  UNTAUGHT  POETS.  463 

We  have  read  over  Mr.  Maclagan's  works,  —  both  the 
volume  of  poems  which  so  gratified  the  taste  of  Jeffrey,^ 
and  an  equally  pleasing  volume,  of  subsequent  appearance, 
dedicated  to  the  Rev.  Dr.  Guthrie,  and  devoted  to  the 
cause  of  ragged  schools.^  The  general  strain  of  both  is 
equally  pleasing ;  though  we  know  not  whether  we  do  not 
prefer  the  simplicity  and  pathos  of  some  of  the  "  Ragged 
School  Rhymes"  to  even  those  compositions  of  the  earlier 
volume  on  which  Jeffrey  has  stamped  his  imprimatur. 
Let  us,  however,  ere  quoting  from  the  latter  work,  submit 
to  the  reader  a  few  stanzas  of  the  piece  which  most  pleased 
the  critic.  It  is  a  younger  sister  that  thus  addresses  —  in 
strains  that,  for  their  quaint  beauty,  remind  us  of  some 
of  the  happier  pieces  of  Marvel!  —  a  sister  older  than  her- 
selfi  but  still  young,  that  had  been  to  her,  in  her  state  of 
orphanage,  as  a  mother. 

"  Lo  I  whilst  I  fondly  look  npon 
Thy  lovely  face,  drinking  the  tone 
Of  thy  sweet  voice,  my  early  known,  — 
My  long,  long  loved,  —  my  dearest  grown,  — 

I  feel  thou  art 

A  joy,  —  a  part 
Of  all  I  prize  in  soul  and  heart. 

"  Sweet  guardian  of  my  infancy. 
Hast  thou  not  been  the  blooming  tree 
Whose  soft  green  branches  sheltered  ma 
From  withering  want's  inclemency? 

No  cloud  of  care 

Nor  bleak  despair 
Could  blight  me  'ncath  thy  branches  fair. 

"  And  thou  hast  been,  siace  that  sad  day 
We  gave  our  mother's  clay  to  clay. 
The  morning  star,  the  evening  ray. 
That  cheered  me  on  life's  weary  way,  — • 

A  vision  bright. 

Filling  my  night 
Of  sorrow  with  thy  looks  of  light. 

>  Sketches  from  Nature,  anJ  other  Poems.    By  Alexander  Haclagan. 
'  Ragged  School  Rhymes.    By  Alexander  3Iaclai;an. 


464  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

"  Yet  there  were  hours  I'll  ne'er  forget 
Ere  sorrow  and  thy  soul  had  met,  — 
Ere  thy  young  cheeks  with  tears  were  wet. 
Or  grief's  pale  seal  was  on  them  set,  — 

Ere  hope  declined. 

And  cares  unkind 
Threw  sadness  o'er  thy  sunny  mind. 

"  In  glorioas  visions  still  I  see 
The  village  green,  the  old  oak  tree, 
The  sun-bathed  banks  where  oft  with  thee 
I've  hunted  for  the  blaeberrie. 
Where  oft  we  crept. 
And  sighed  and  wept, 
Where  our  dead  linnet  soundly  slept. 

"  Again  I  see  the  rustic  chair 
In  which  you  swung  me  through  sweet  air. 
Or  twined  fair  lilies  with  my  hair, 
Or  dressed  my  little  doll  with  care; 

In  fancy's  sight 

Still  rise  its  bright 
Bine  beads,  red  shoes,  and  boddice  white. 

*'  And  at  the  sunsets  in  the  west. 
And  at  my  joy  when  gently  prest 
To  the  soft  pillow  of  thy  breast. 
Lolled  by  thy  mellow  voice  to  rest. 
Sung  into  dreams 
Of  woods  and  streams. 
Of  lovely  buds,  and  birds,  and  beams. 

"  When  wintry  tempests  swept  the  vale, 
When  thunder  and  the  heavy  hail 
And  lightning  turned  each  young  cheek  pale^ 
Thine  ever  was  the  Bible  tale 
Or  psalmist's  song 
The  wild  night  long, 
Fresh  from  the  heart  where  faith  is  strong. 

*  Now  summer  clouds,  like  golden  towers. 
Fall  shattered  into  diamond  showers : 
Come,  let  us  seek  our  wildwood  bowers. 
And  lay  our  heads  among  the  flowers; 

Come,  sister  dear, 

That  we  may  hear 
Our  mother's  spirit  whispering  near." 


THE   UNTAUGHT  POETS.  465 

These  stanzas  are,  as  the  great  Scotch  critic  well  re- 
marked, at  once  "touching,"  "graphic,"  and  "elegant," 
and  certainly  exhibit  no  trace  of  what  Johnson  well  terms 
the  "  narrow  conversation "  to  which  untaught  men  in 
humble  circumstances  "  are  inevitably  condemned."  But 
regarding  the  difficulties  with  which  Mr.  Maclagan  has 
had  to  contend,  we  must  quote  from  himself;  "That  a 
working-man,"  we  find  him  saying,  "should  write  and 
publish  a  volume  of  verse,  is  no  phenomenon  :  many  of 
the  brightest  lights  of  literature  in  all  countries  have  toiled 
for  years  at  the  press,  the  plough,  the  loom,  and  the  ham- 
mer. That  wealth  and  education  in  themselves  have 
never  made  a  true  minstrel,  is  proverbial ;  nevertheless, 
they  are  powerful  allies  in  his  favor.  Take,  for  instance, 
a  youth  from  school,  ten  years  of  age,  and  bind  him  at 
thirteen  or  fourteen  to  a  laborious  trade.  See  him  work- 
ing ten  hours  a  day  for  years  without,  intermission,  strug- 
gling to  unravel,  meanwhile,  the  mysteries  of  literature, 
science,  and  art,  without  assistance  or  encouragement,  and 
you  will  find  that  he  has  many  hard  battles  to  fight  before 
he  can  hope  to  attain  even  standing-room  in  the  literary 
arena.  Such,  literally,  has  been  the  position  of  the  author 
of  the  present  volume."  Let  us  remark,  however,  that 
untaught  men  possessed  of  the  true  poetic  faculty  are 
usually,  in  one  important  respect,  happier  in  their  genius 
than  untaught  men  whose  intellect  is  of  the  reflective  cast, 
and  their  bent  scientific.  The  poets  are  developed  much 
earlier,  and  lose  less  in  life.  Ramsay  began  to  publish  his 
poems,  in  detached  broad-sheets,  in  his  five-and-twentieth 
year;  Burns  in  his  twenty-sixth  year  had  written  the 
greater  part  of  his  Kilmarnock  volume,  including  his  "  Twa 
Dogs,"  "  Halloween,"  and  the  "  Cottar's  Saturday  Night ; " 
Alexander  Wilson  produced  his  "  Watty  and  Meg  "  at  the 
same  age ;  and  the  writings  of  both  Tannahill  and  Allan 
Cunningham  saw  the  light  ere  either  writer  was  turned 
of  thirty.  But  self-taught  men  of  science  have  usually  to 
undergo  a  much  longer  probationary  period  ere  they  can 


466  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTrPIC. 

elevate  themselves  into  notice.  James  Ferguson  was 
nearly  forty  before  he  began  to  give  public  lectures  on  his 
favorite  subjects,  astronomy  and  mechanics.  Franklin  was 
in  his  forty-third  year  ere  he  had  demonstrated  the  iden- 
tity of  lightning  with  the  electric  spark ;  and  not  until  he 
had  attained  the  same  age  did  Sir  William  Herschel  render 
himself  known  as  a  great  astronomer  and  the  discoverer 
of  a  new  planet.  Both  in  national  and  individual  history, 
poetry  is  of  early  and  science  of  late  growth.  The  self- 
taught  poet  is  not  unfrequently  developed  at  as  early  an 
age  as  men  of  a  similar  cast  of  genius  who  have  enjoyed 
all  the  advantages  of  complete  culture;  judging  from  the 
experience  of  the  past,  he  need  not  lose  a  single  year  of 
life ;  whereas  the  self-taught  man  of  science  may  deem 
himself  more  than  usually  fortunate  if  he  does  not  lose  at 
least  ten. 

We  have  said  that  in  some  respects  we  prefer  Mr.  Mac- 
lagan's  second  publication,  the  "  Ragged  School  Rhymes," 
to  his  first.  It  is,  in  the  main,  a  more  earnest,  and,  in  the 
poetic  sense,  more  truthful  work.  When  the  poet,  in  his 
earlier  volume,  sings,  as  he  does  at  times,  though  rarely, 
of  drinking  "  cronies  "  and  usages,  we  know  that  he  is 
catching  but  the  dying  echoes  of  a  bypast  time,  when 
there  was  not  a  little  staggering  on  the  top  of  Parnassus, 
and  Helicon  used  to  run  at  times,  like  a  town  cistern  on 
an  election  day,  whiskey  punch  by  the  hour.  But  there  is 
none  of  this  in  the  other  volume.  The  distress  which  it 
exhibits,  the  sympathy  which  it  expresses,  the  views  of 
nature  which  it  embodies,  are  all  realities  of  the  present 
day.  The  earlier  volume,  however,  contains  more  think- 
ing ;  and  the  possession  of  both  are  necessary  to  the  man 
desirous  of  rightly  appreciating  the  untaught  poet  Mac- 
lagan.  We  find  some  little  difficulty  in  s€!lecting  from  the 
"Ragged  School  Rhymes"  an  appropriate  specimen,  not 
from  the  poverty,  but  from  the  wealth,  of  the  volume. 
We  fix,  however,  on  the  following,  as  suited  to  remind 
the  reader  of  that  passage  in  one  of  the  larger  poems  of 


THE  UNTAUGHT   POETS.  467 

Langliorne  which,  according  to  Sir  Walter  Scott,  power- 
fully elicited  the  sympathy  of  Burns,  though  we  are  pretty 
certain  Mr.  Maclagan  had  not  the  passage  iu  his  eye  when 
he  wrote.  Indeed,  the  latter  part  of  his  poem  could  have 
been  written  iu  only  the  present  age  :  — 


THE   OUTCAST. 

*•  And  did  you  pity  me,  kind  sir? 

Say,  did  you  pity  me? 
Then,  oh  how  kind,  and  oh  how  warm, 

Your  generous  heart  must  be  I 
For  I  have  fasted  all  the  day. 

Ay,  nearly  fasted  three, 
And  slept  upon  the  cold,  hard  earth. 

And  none  to  pity  me; 
And  none  to  pity  me,  kind  sir. 

And  none  to  pity  me. 

"  My  mother  told  me  I  was  bom 

On  a  battlefield  in  Spain, 
Where  mighty  men  like  lions  fought. 

Where  blood  ran  down  like  rain ! 
And  how  she  wept,  with  bursting  heart. 

My  father's  corse  to  see. 
When  I  lay  cradled  'mong  the  dead. 

And  none  to  pity  me; 
And  none  to  pity  me,  kind  sir, 

And  none  to  pity  me. 

•*  At  length  there  came  a  dreadful  day,  — 

My  mother  too  lay  dead,  — 
And  I  was  sent  to  England's  shore 

To  beg  my  daily  bread,  — 
To  beg  my  bread;  but  cruel  men 

Said,  Boy,  this  may  not  be. 
So  they  locked  me  in  a  cold,  cold  cell. 

And  none  to  pity  me ; 
And  none  to  pity  me,  kind  sir. 

And  none  to  pity  me. 


468  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

"  They  whipped  me,  —  sent  me  hungry  forth; 

I  saw  a  lovely  field 
Of  fragrant  beans ;  I  plucked,  I  ate : 

To  hunger  all  must  yield. 
The  farmer  came,  —  a  cold,  a  stem, 

A  cruel  man  was  he; 
He  sent  me  as  a  thief  to  jail, 

And  none  to  pity  me; 
And  none  to  pity  me,  kind  sir. 

And  none  to  pity  me. 

"  It  was  a  blessed  place  for  me, 

For  I  had  better  fare ; 
It  was  a  blessed  place  for  me,  — 

Sweet  was  the  evening  prayer. 
At  length  they  drew  my  prison  bolts. 

And  I  again  was  free,  — 
Poor,  weak,  and  naked  in  the  street. 

And  none  to  pity  me; 
And  none  to  pity  me,  kind  sir. 

And  none  to  pity  me.  - 

**  I  saw  sweet  children  in  the  fields. 

And  fair  ones  in  the  street. 
And  some  were  eating  tempting  fruit. 

And  some  got  kisses  sweet; 
And  some  were  in  their  father's  arms. 

Some  on  their  mother's  knee; 
I  thought  my  orphan  heart  would  break. 

For  none  did  pity  me; 
For  none  did  pity  me,  kind  sir, 

For  none  did  pity  me. 

**  Then  do  you  pity  me,  kind  sir? 

Then  do  you  pity  me? 
Then,  oh  how  kind,  and  oh  how  warm, 

Tour  generous  heart  must  be  I 
For  T  have  fasted  all  the  day. 

Ay,  nearly  fasted  three. 
And  slept  upon  the  cold,  hard  ground. 

And  none  to  pity  me; 
And  none  to  pity  me,  kind  sir, 

And  none  to  pity  me." 


-OUE  NOVEL   LITERATURE.  469 


XII. 

OUR  NOVEL  LITERATURE. 

What  are  the  most  influential  writings  of  the  present 
time,  —  the  writings  that  tell  with  most  effect  on  public 
opinion  ?  Not,  certainly,  the  graver  or  more  eleaborate 
productions  of  the  press.  Some  of  these  in  former  times 
exerted  a  prodigioiis  influence.  There  were  four  great 
works,  in  especial,  that  appeared  at  wide  intervals  during 
the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  —  the  last  of 
their  number  about  eighty  years  ago,  —  that  revolutionized, 
on  their  respective  subjects,  the  thinking  of  all  Europe ; 
and  these  were,  the  "Laws  of  Peace  and  War,"  the  "  Essay 
on  the  Human  Understanding,"  the  "  Spirit  of  Laws,"  and. 
the  "Wealth  of  Nations,"  —  all  works  of  profound  elabo- 
ration, that  contain  the  thinking  of  volumes  condensed  into 
single  pages.  At  an  earlier  period  there  were  theological 
works  that  stirred  men's  minds  to  their  utmost  depths, 
and  changed  the  political  relations  of  states  and  kingdoms 
over  all  Christendom.  Such  was  the  influence  exerted  by 
the  treatises  of  Luther,  whose  written  "  words  were  half- 
battles  ; "  and  by  those  "  Institutes  of  Calvin  "  that  gave 
form  and  body  to  the  thinking  of  half  the  religious  world. 
But  whether  it  be  that  we  live  in  an  age  too  superficial  to 
produce,  or  too  busy  too  read,  such  works,  or  at  once  su- 
perficial and  busy  both,  without  either  the  works  to  read 
or  the  time  to  read  them  in,  it  is  certain  that  almost  all 
power  has  passed  away  from  the  grave  and  the  elaborate 
to  the  light  and  the  clever,  and  that  what  would  have 
been  pronounced  about  a  century  ago  the  least  influential 
kinds  of  writing  must  now  be  recognized  as  by  far  the 
most  influential.  Had  one  said  to  a  literary  man  in  the 
40 


470  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTTFIO. 

early  days  of  Johnson,  "  Pray,  what  do  you  regard  as  the 
least  important  departments  of  your  literature,  both  in 
themselves  and  their  effects,  and  that  tell  least  on  the 
public  mind?"  the  reply  would  probably  have  been, 
"  Why,  the  writing  in  our  newspapers  and  our  novels." 
And  now  the  same  reply  would  serve  at  least  equally  well 
to  indicate  the  kinds  of  writing  that  are  most  telling  and 
influential.  None  others  exert  so  great  a  power  over  the 
general  mind  of  the  community  as  novels  and  newspaper 
articles.  And  the  mode  of  piecemeal  publication  recently 
resorted  to  by  our  more  popular  novelists  gives  to  the 
effect  proper  to  their  compositions  as  pictures  of  great 
genius  and  power  the  further  effect  of,  pamphlets  or  mag- 
azines: they  are  at  once  novels  and  newspaper  articles 
too. 

Considerably  more  than  a  century  has  passed,  however, 
since  a  judicious  critic  might  have  seen  how  very  influ- 
ential a  class  of  compositions  well-written  novels  were  to 
become.  "The  Life  and  Adventures  of  Robinson  Ci'usoe" 
appeared  as  far  back  as  the  year  1719,  and  at  once  rose  to 
the  popularity  which  it  has  ever  since  maintained.  But 
it  failed  tt>  attract  the  notice  of  the  critics.  The  men  who 
sat  in  judgment  on  the  small  elegances  of  the  wits  of  the 
reign  of  George  I,,  and  marked  how  sentences  were  bal- 
anced and  couplets  rounded,  could  not  stoop  to  notice  a 
composition  so  humble  as  a  novel,  more  especially  a  novel 
written  by  a  self-taught  man.  But  his  singularly  vivacious 
production  forced  a  way  for  itself,  leaving  the  fine  sen- 
tences and  smart  couplets  to  be  forgotten.  In  a  short 
time  it  was  known  all  over  Europe ;  several  translations 
appeared  simultaneously  in  France,  much  about  the  period 
when  Le  Sage  was  engaged  in  writing,  in  one  of  the 
smaller  houses  of  one  of  the  most  neglected  suburbs  of 
Paris,  his  "Gil  Bias"  and  his  "Devil  on  Two  Sticks;'* 
and  such  was  the  rage  of  imitation  which  it  excited  in 
Germany,  that  no  fewer  than  forty-one  German  novels 
were  pi-oduced  that  had  Robinson  Crusoes  for  their  heroes, 


OUK   NOVEL   LITERATURE.  471 

and  fifteen  others,  that,  though  equally  palpable  imitations, 
had  heroes  that  bore  a  different  name.  Eight  years  after 
the  publication  of  Defoe's  great  work,  there  appeared  an 
English  novel  of  a  more  extraordinary  form,  and  of  higher 
literary  pretensions,  in  the  "  Travels  of  Gulliver ; "  and  it 
too  at  once  attained  to  a  popularity  which  has  never  since 
flagged  or  diminished.  Thirteen  years  more  elapsed,  and 
Richardson  had  produced  his  "Pamela,"  and,  shortly  after, 
Fielding  his  "  Joseph  Andrews."  Smollett  came  upon  the 
scene  with  his  "  Roderick  Random  "  in  eight  years  moi'e. 
There  followed  in  succession,  after  the  lapse  of  about  ten 
other  years,  the  "  Rasselas  "  of  Johnson  and  the  "Candide  " 
of  Voltaire,  —  both  works  which  spread  over  the  world ; 
and  in  yet  seven  other  years  Goldsmith's  "Vicar  of  Wake- 
field "  appeared,  and  attained  to  even  a  more  extensive 
popularity  than  either.  And  yet  still,  after  the  teaching 
of  nearly  half  a  century,  —  nay,  after  nearly  two  centuries 
had  elapsed  since  a  novel  was  recognized  as  the  most  pop- 
ular and  influential  of  all  the  works  ever  produced  by 
Spain, — grave  and  serious  people  continued  to  speak  of 
novels  as  mere  frivolities,  that  were  to  be  in  every  case 
eschewed  by  the  young,  but  were  scarce  of  importance 
enough  to  be  heeded  by  the  old  at  all.  Nor  even  yet,  — 
after  the  novels  of  Scott  have,  if  we  may  so  express  our- 
selves, taken  possession  of  the  world,  —  after  the  most  po- 
tent work  of  Germany,  the  "Wilhelra  Meister"  of  Goethe, 
has  appeared,  like  that  of  Spain,  in  the  form  of  a  novel, — 
after  the  modern  novels  of  France  have  been  measuring 
lances  with  even  its  priesthood,  and  approving  themselves, 
in  at  least  the  larger  towns,  the  mightier  power  of  the 
two,  —  and  after,  in  our  own  country,  it  has  been  accepted 
altogether  as  a  marvel  that  history,  in  the  case  of  Macau- 
lay's,  should  have  its  thirty  thousand  subsciibers,  but  as 
quite  an  expected  and  ordinary  thing  that  fiction,  in  Dick- 
ens's current  work,  should  have  at  least  an  equal  number, 
—  the  old  estimate  in  the  minds  of  many  has  been  suffered 
to  remain  uncorrected,  and  the  novel  is  thought  of  rather 


472  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

as  a  light,  though  not  always  very  laudable  toy,  than  as  a 
tremendously  potent  instrument  for  the  origination  or  the 
revolutionizing  of  opinion.  Some  of  our  great  lawyers 
could  make  sharp  speeches,  about  two  years  ago,  against 
what  they  termed  the  misrepresentations  of"  Bleak  House," 
evidently  regarding  it,  as  they  well  might,  as  the  most 
formidable  series  of  pamphlets  against  the  abuses  of 
chancery,  and  the  less  justifiable  practices  of  the  legid 
profession,  that  ever  appeared.  We  are  by  no  means  sure, 
however,  that  the  church  is  as  thoroughly  awake  to  the 
tendencies  of  his  present  work  as  members  of  the  legal 
faculty,  wise  in  their  generation,  were  to  the  design  of  his 
last. 

Most  of  the  novelists  have  been  hostile  to  virtue  of  a 
high  or  severe  kind  in  general;  and  there  were  few  of 
eminence  produced  in  our  own  country  that  did  not  leave 
on  record  their  dislike  of  evangelism  in  particular.  We 
are  afraid  Byron  was  in  the  right  in  holding  that  Cervantes 
laughed  away  the  chivalry  of  Spain  :  Spain  produced  no  he- 
roes after  the  age  of  Don  Quixote.  As  for  Le  Sage,  Vinet 
is  at  least  as  just  in  his  criticism  as  Byron  in  his,  when  he 
says  that  "his  novels  do  not  contain  a  single  honest  char- 
acter,—  nothing  but  knaves  and  weaklings,  and  even  the 
very  weaklings  are  far  from  being  honest."  "In  a  word," 
we  find  the  critic  again  remarking,  " '  Gil  Bias '  is  but  a 
paraphrase  of  the  celebrated  maxim  of  Rochefoucauld, — 
'  Virtue  is  only  a  word ;  it  is  nowhere  found  on  the  earth ; 
and  we  must  be  resigned."  Most  of  the  modern  novelists 
of  France  stand  on  a  still  lower  level  than  that  of  their 
great  master,  Le  Sage.  He  did  not  inculcate  virtue,  and 
they  teach  positive  vice.  Nor  is  Goethe  a  safer  guide. 
The  "Sorrows  of  Werter"  and  "  Wilhelm  Meister's  Ap- 
prenticeship" are  both  very  mischievous  books.  The  nov- 
elists of  our  own  country  have  been  more  mixed  in  their 
character.  Defoe  we  must  regard  as,  with  all  his  faults,  a 
well-meaning  man,  who  had  been  an  object  of  persecution 
himself,  and  had  learned  to  sympathize  with  the  persecu- 


OUR  NOVEL   LITERATURE.  473 

ted.  The  Scotch  were  very  angry  with  him  for  the  part 
he  took  in  the  Union ;  but  that  did  not  prevent  his  doing 
justice,  in  his  history,  to  their  long  struggles  for  ecclesias- 
tical independence ;  and  religion  never  conies  across  him 
in  his  novels,  —  some  of  them  quite  loose  enough,  —  but 
he  has  always  a  good  word  to  say  in  its  behalf.  He  was 
no  very  profound  theologian  :  Friday,  in  the  dialogue  parts 
of  "  Crusoe,"  is  nearly  as  subtle  a  divine  as  his  master ; 
and  when  poor  Olivia  Primrose  instances,  as  a  proof  of  her 
large  acquirements  in  controversy  and  her  consequent  abil- 
ity of  converting  'Squire  Thornhill,  that  she  had  read  all  the 
"  Religious  Courtship,"  —  another  of  Defoe's  works,  —  we 
at  once  agree  that  the  worthy  doctor,  her  father,  did  quite 
right  in  sending  her  off  to  "help  her  mother  in  making 
the  gooseberry  pie."  Swift,  clergyman  as  he  was,  mani- 
fested, however,  a  very  different  spirit  from  that  of  Defoe  : 
in  proportion  as  he  knew  more  he  reverenced  less ;  and 
there  is  perhaps  nothing  in  our  literature  more  essentially 
profane  than  his  essay  on  the  "  Mechanical  Operation  of 
the  Spirit,"  and  his  "  Tale  of  a  Tub."  Kichardson,  no 
doubt,  deemed  himself  a  friend  to  virtue  and  religion.  He 
patronized  both  after  a  sort,  and  many  good  ladies  and 
clergymen  were  moved,  in  consequence,  to  patronize  lum ; 
and  yet,  as  Vinet  pointedly  says  of  the  general  literature 
of  France  in  that  age,  his  "  very  morality  was  in  fact  im- 
moral." We  know  not  whether  we  would  not  give  "  Tom 
Jones"  as  readily  into  the  hands  of  a  young  person  as  the 
virtuously  written  "  Pamela."  There  is  more  of  a  whole- 
some, generous,  unselfish  spirit  about  the  scapegrace,  than 
in  the  demure,  designing  girl,  who,  after  behaving  herself 
well  for  a  time,  sets  her  cap  to  catch  her  master,  and  is  at 
length  rewarded  with  a  fine  house,  a  fine  coach,  and  Mr. 
Booby.  And  yet  Fielding,  like  his  hero,  was  a  sad  scape- 
grace. He  had  a  respect  for  what  he  deemed  religion. 
We  see  it  in  his  novels  even.  Of  the  few  thoroughly 
honest  men  he  ever  drew,  —  and,  unlike  Le  Sage,  he  did 
occasionally  draw  honest  men,  —  two  are  clergymen, — 
40* 


474  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

Di*.  Harrison  in  "Amelia,"  and  the  world-renowned  Parson 
Adams  in  "Joseph  Andrews;"  and  both  are  represented, 
though  in  the  case  of  the  latter  with  many  a  ludicrous 
accompaniment,  as  at  least  as  good  and  sincere  Christians 
as  Fielding  could  make  them,  Nay,  curiously  enough, 
one  of  the  novelist's  last  works,  a  work  which  he  did  not 
live  to  finish,  was  a  defense  of  religion  against  Bolingbroke, 
and  a  very  ingenious  one.  But  alas  for  a  Christianity 
such  as  that  of  Whitefield  when  it  came  across  him  !  If 
the  devoted  missionary  could  have  been  annoyed  by  any- 
thing, it  would  have  been  by  the  ruthless  humor  with 
which  his  brother  and  his  brother's  wife  are  introduced 
by  name  into  "  Tom  Jones,"  as  the  landlord  and  landlady 
of  the  Bell  public  house  in  Gloucester ;  and  the  terms  in 
which  the  lady  is  spoken  of  as  "  a  very  sensible  person," 
who,  though  at  first  the  preacher's  "  documents  "  made  so 
much  impression  on  her  "  that  she  put  herself  to  the  ex- 
pense of  a  long  hood  in  order  to  attend  the  extraordinary 
movements  of  the  Spirit,"  got  tired  of  emotions,  "  which 
proved  to  be  not  worth  a  farthing,"  and  at  once  "  laid  by 
the  hood,  and  abandoned  the  sect." 

Smollett  was  of  a  similar  spirit.  We  know  nothing 
better  on  the  subject  in  our  language  than  the  essay  in 
which  he  argues  against  Shaftesbury  that  ridicule  is  not 
the  test  of  truth ;  but  no  little  ridicule  does  he  himself 
heap  on  Methodism  in  his  "  Humphrey  Clinker."  There 
is  no  bitterness  in  his  exhibition  ;  his  untaught  Methodist 
preacher  is  not  a  disagreeable  fool,  like  the  Rev.  Mr.  Chad- 
band,  or  a  greedy  rogue,  like  the  Methodist  preacher  in 
"  Pickwick,"  whom  old  Weller  treats  to  a  ducking ;  but, 
on  the  contrary,  a  thoroughly  honest  fellow,  and,  in  his 
own  proper  sphere,  a  sensible  and  useful  one.  He  is,  in 
short,  no  other  than  the  faithful  Clinker  himself.  But  he 
never  associates  religion  of  any  earnestness  save  with 
characters  of  humble  parts  and  acquirements,  and  always 
accompanied  with  points  of  extreme  Indicrousness.  Gold- 
smith was  of  a  more  genial  temperament  than  Smollett. 


OUR   NOVEL   LITERATURE.  475 

His  Vicar  is  one  of  the  most  thoroughly  honest  men  that 
ever  lived,  and  has  all  the  religion  that  poor  Goldie  could 
give  him.  It  was  not  until  a  later  time,  however,  and 
in  Scotland  too,  —  for  we  need  not  reckon  on  the  now 
forgotten  novel  of  Mrs.  Hannah  More,  —  that  religious 
characters  were  most  largely  introduced  into  our  novel 
literature.  Scott,  Lockhart,  Wilson,  Gait,  Ferrier,  have 
all  brought  religion  in  review  before  the  public  in  their 
novels,  —  some  of  them  with  great  power,  some  with  con- 
siderable truth,  some  with  truth  and  with  power  too ;  and 
at  least  one  novelist  of  considerable  ability,  the  excellent 
authoress  of  "  Father  Clement,"  made  it  her  leading  sub- 
ject. They  all  at  least  knew  more  of  religion  than  the 
earlier  novelists;  and,  save  when  carried  away,  as  in  the 
case  of  Scott,  by  Jacobite  predilections,  or  in  that  of  Lock- 
hart,  by  moderate  ones,  did  it  more  justice.  Even  in  some 
of  Scott's  pictures  there  is  wonderful  truth.  The  few 
words  in  which  poor  Nanty  Ewart  is  made,  in  his  remorse, 
to  describe  his  father,  are  those  of  a  great  master  of  char- 
acter. "There  was  my  father  (God  bless  the  old  man!), 
a  true  chip  of  the  old  Presbyterian  block,  walked  his  parish 
like  a  captain  on  the  quarter-deck,  and  was  always  ready 
to  do  good  to  rich  and  poor.  Off  went  the  laird's  hat  to 
the  minister  as  fast  as  the  poor  man's  bonnet.  When  the 
eye  saw  him,  —  Pshaw !  what  have  I  to  do  with  that  now? 
Yes,  he  was,  as  Virgil  hath  it,  '  Fi>  sapientia  et  pietate 
gravis^""  Still  more  distinctive  is  he,  however,  when  he 
speaks  of  him  in  connection  with  two  charitable  ladies  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  "  These  Misses  Arthciret,'* 
says  Nanty,  "  feed  the  hungry  and  clothe  the  naked,  and 
such  like  acts,  which^  my  poor  father  used  to  say,  were 
filthy  rags  /  hut  he  dressed  himself  out  with  as  many  of 
them,  as  most  folk.''''  There  is  not  such  a  stroke  as  this 
in  all  Dickens.  The  writer  who  could  draw  such  a  feature 
with  a  single  dash  of  the  pencil  well  knew  what  he  was 
about. 

But  it  would  be  easy  to  multiply  remarks  such  as  these 


476        -  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

on  the  novelists.  The  fact  of  their  mighty  influence  on 
opinion  cannot,  we  think,  be  challenged  ;  and  so  it  is  of 
great  importance  that  the  influence  should  be  a  good  one, 
or  at  least  so  far  negatively  good  as  not  to  be  hurtful. 
We  are  aware  that  there  are  very  excellent  people  who 
would  altogether  taboo  this  class  of  works ;  they  would 
fain  render  them  the  subject  of  a  sort  of  Maine  law,  make 
the  open  perusal  of  them  unlawful,  and  severely  punish  all 
smuggling.  But  their  attempts  hitherto  have  been  at- 
tended with  but  miserable  success.  We  have  often  had 
occasion  to  know,  that,  even  among  their  own  children, 
they  succeeded  with  only  the  very  stupid  ones,  who  have 
no  turn  for  reading;  and  that  model-grown  men  or  women 
of  their  training,  ignorant  of  our  novel  literature,  are  usu- 
ally scarce  less  ignorant  of  literature  of  any  other  kind, 
and  yet  not  a  whit  better  than  their  neighbors.  Besides, 
even  were  the  case  otherwise,  —  even  were  they  to  be 
really  successful  in  their  own  little  spheres, —  the  great 
fact  of  the  influence  and  popularity  of  the  genuine  novel 
would  still  remain  untouched.  Dickens  would  have  his 
thirty  thousand  subscribers  for  every  new^  work,  and  at 
least  his  half  million  of  readers  ;  and  the  proprietor  of  the 
Scott  novels  would  continue  to  sell  sixty  thousand  volumes 
yearly.  Further,  the  novel  per  se,  the  novel  regarded  sim- 
ply as  a  literary  form,  is  morally  as  unexceptionable  as  any 
other  literary  form  whatever,  —  as  unexceptionable  as  the 
epic  poem,  for  instance,  or  the  allegory,  or  the  parable. 
The  "  Vicar  of  Wakefield,"  as  a  form,  is  as  little  blamable 
as  the  "  Deserted  Village,"  or  "  Waverley  "  as  "  Marmion  " 
or  the  "  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel."  And  so  we  must  hold, 
that,  on  every  occasion  in  which  the/brm  is  made  the  ve- 
hicle of  truth,  —  truth  of  external  nature,  truth  of  character, 
historic  truth  in  at  least  its  essence,  and  ethical  truth  in 
its  bearings  on  the  great  problem  of  society,  —  it  should 
be  received  with  merited  favor,  —  not  frowned  upon  or 
rejected.  We  have  been  much  pleased,  oh  this  principle, 
with  the  novels  of  a  writer  to  whom  we  ought  to  have 


OUR   NOVEL   LITERATURE.  477 

referred  approvingly  long  ago,  —  the  authoress  of  "  Mrs. 
Margaret  Maitland," —  one  of  the  most  thoroughly  truth- 
ful writers  of  her  class,  and  one  of  the  most  pleasing  also. 
We  have  now  before  us  what  may  be  regarded  as  a  contin- 
uation of  her  first  work,  —  in  "  Lilliesleaf," —  a  concluding 
series  of  passages  in  the  life  of  "  Mrs.  Margaret  Maitland." 
It  is,  of  course,  a  formidable  matter  to  introduce  a  second 
time  to  the  public  any  character  that  had  on  its  first  ap- 
pearance engaged  and  interested  it.  Shakspeare  could  do 
it  with  impunity.  Falstaff,  on  even  his  third  appearance, 
—  an  appearance,  however,  which,  had  the  great  dramatist 
been  left  to  himself,  he  would  never  have  made,  —  is  Fal- 
staff still.  But  even  Scott  has  been  but  partially  success- 
fill  in  an  attempt  of  the  kind.  The  Coeur  de  Lion  of  the 
"  Talisman  "  is  not  at  all  so  interesting  a  personage  as  the 
Cceur  de  Lion  of  "  Ivanhoe."  And  so  we  took  up  these 
new  volumes  with  some  little  solicitude  regarding  Mrs. 
Margaret.  The  old  lady  has,  however,  acquitted  herself 
admirably,  —  in  some  passages  more  admirably,  we  will 
venture  to  say,  in  the  face  of  an  opposite  opinion  which 
we  have  seen  elsewhere  expressed,  than  on  her  first  ap- 
pearance. In  the  early  part  of  the  first  volume  we  were, 
indeed,  sensible  of  an  air  of  languor,  and  the  narrative 
moved  on  too  slowly,  —  Mrs.  Maitland  seemed  to  have 
grown  greatly  older  than  when  we  had  last  seen  her ; 
though  even  in  this  part  of  the  work  we  found  some  very 
admirable  things, — among  the  rest,  a  true  life-picture  of  the 
ancient  dowager  lady  of  Lilliesleaf,  with  her  broken  health 
and  failed  understanding,  ever  carping  and  fault-finding; 
and,  while  beyond  the  reach  of  all  advice  herself,  always 
obtruding  her^worse  than  useless  advices  on  other  people, 
who  did  not  want  them,  and  could  not  take  them,  and  had 
no  need  of  them.  As  the  work  goes  on,  however,  the 
interest  increases  ;  there  are  new  characters  introduced, 
truthful  glimpses  of  the  Scotch  people  given,  the  incidents 
thicken,  and  the  narrative,  though  always  quiet,  as  becomes 
the  grave  and  gentle  narrator,  gathers  headway,  and  grows 


478  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

more  rapid.  "We  know  few  things  more  masterly  than  the 
character  of  Rhoda,  a  wild,  clever,  ill-taught  girl,  brought 
up  by  a  reckless,  extravagant  father,  who,  after  utterly 
neglecting  her  himself,  introduces  her  into  the  house  of 
her  half-sister,  an  excellent  but  somewhat  proud  and  cold 
woman,  who  evinces  but  little  sympathy  for  her  provoking 
and  haughty  but  very  unhappy  relation.  Mrs.  Margaret, 
however,  after  encountering  many  a  rebuff,  at  length  wins 
her;- and  there  are  few  things  finer  in  our  novel  literature 
than  the  scene  in  which  she  does  so :  — 

"  As  I  was  going  to  my  bed,  I  tarried  ia  the  long  gallery,  where 
Miss  Rhoda's  door  opened  into,  to  look  at  the  bonnie  harvest  moon 
mounting  in  the  sky,  the  which  was  so  bright  upon  the  fields  and  the 
garden  below  the  window,  that  I  could  not  pass  it  by  without  turn- 
ing aside  to  glance  upon  the  grand  skies,,  and  the  warm  eartli  with 
all  routh  and  plenty  yet  upon  her  breast,  that  were  both  the  handi- 
work of  the  Lord.  I  had  put  my  candle  upon  a  table  at  the  door 
of  my  own  room ;  and  as  I  was  standing  here,  I  heard  a  sound  of 
crying  and  wailing  out  of  Miss  Rhoda's  room.  It  was  not  loud,  but 
for  all  that  it  was  very  bitter,  as  if  the  poor  bairn  was  breaking  her 
heart.  Now,  truly,  when  I  heard  that,  I  never  took  two  thoughts 
about  it,  nor  tarried  to  ponder  whether  I  would  be  welcome  to  her 
or  no ;  but  hearing  that  it  was  her  voice,  and  that  she  was  in  distress, 
I  straightway  turned  and  rapped  at  the  door. 

*'  The  voice  stoppit  in  a  moment ;  so  quick  I  scarce  could  think  it 
was  real ;  and  then  I  heard  a  rustling  and  motion  in  the  room.  I 
thought  she  might  be  feared,  seeing  it  was  late ;  so  I  said,  '  It  is 
me,  my  dear ;  will  you  let  me  speak  to  you  ? '  It  was  all  quiet 
for  a  moment  more,  and  then  the  door  was  opened  in  an  impatient 
way,  and  I  entered  in.  Rhoda  was  there,  turning  her  back  upon 
me  ;  and  there  was  no  light  but  the  moonlight,  which  made  the  big 
room,  eerie  though  it  was,  so  clear  that  you  could  have  read  a  book. 
The  curtains  of  the  bed  were  drawn  close,  as  Cecy  had  drawn 
them  when  she  sorted  the  room  for  the  young  lady,  and  Rhoda's 
things  were  lying  about  on  the  chairs  ;  and  through  the  open  door 
of  the  small  room  that  was  within  there  was  another  eerie  glint  of 
the  white  moonlight ;  and  pale  shadows  of  it,  that,  truly,  I  liked  not 
to  look  upon,  were  in  the  big  mirror  that  stood  near.    It  was  far 


OUR    NOVEL   LITERATURE.  479 

from  pleasant  to  me,  —  and  I  was  like  to  be  less  moved  by  fancy 
than  a  young  thing  like  Rhoda,  —  the  look  this  room  had. 

" '  My  dear  bairn,'  said  I,  being  more  earnest  than  I  ever  waa 
with  her  before,  '  will  you  let  me  hear  what  ails  you  ?  I  ken  what 
trouble  is  myself;  and  many  a  young  thing  has  told  her  trouble  to 
me.  And  you  are  lone  and  solitary  and  motherless,  my  poor  bairn  ; 
and  I  am  an  aged  woman,  and  would  fain  bring  you  comfort  if  it 
was  in  my  power.  Sit  down  here,  and  keep  no  ill  thought  in  your 
heart  of  me ;  for  I  ken  what  it  is  to  be  solitary  and  without  friends 
mysel.'" 

"  She  stood  awhile,  and  would  not  mind  what  I  said,  nor  the  hand 
I  put  upon  her  arm.  And  then  she  suddenly  fell  down  upon  her 
knees  in  a  violent  way,  and  laid  her  face  upon  the  sofa,  and  cried. 
Truly,  I  kent  not  of  such  tears.  I  have  shed  heavy  ones,  and  have 
Been  them  shed ;  but  I  kent  not  aught  like  the  passion  and  anger 
and  fierceness  of  this. 

"  '  I  can't  tell  you  what  grieves  me,'  she  said,  starting  up,  and 
speaking  in  her  quick  way,  that  was  so  strange  to  me,  — '  a  hundred 
thousand  things  —  everything  I  I  should  like  to  go  and  kill  myself — 
I  should  like  to  be  tortured  —  oh  I  anything  —  anything  rather  than 
this ! ' 

"  '  My  dear,  is  it  yourself  you  are  battling  with  ?  '  said  I ;  'for 
that  is  a  good  warfare,  and  the  Lord  will  help  you  if  you  try  it 
aright.     But  if  it  is  not  yourself,  what  is  it,  my  bairn  ?  * 

"  She  flung  away  out  of  my  hand,  and  ran  about  the  room  like  a 
wild  thing.  Then  she  came,  quite  steady  and  quiet,  back  again.  '  Yes,' 
she  said, '  I  suppose  it  is  myself  I  am  fighting  with.  I  am  a  wild 
beast,  or  something  like  it ;  and  I  am  biting  at  my  cage.  I  wish  you 
would  beat  me,  or  hurt  me,  —  will  you  ?  I  should  like  to  be  ill,  or 
have  a  fever,  or  something  to  put  me  in  great  pain.  For  you  are  a 
good  old  lady,  I  know,  though  I  have  been  very  rude  to  you.  No, 
I  am  sure  I  cannot  tell  you  what  gi'ieves  me ;  for  I  cannot  £ght  with 
you.  It  is  all  papa's  fault,  —  that  is  what  it  is !  He  persuaded  me 
that  people  would  pay  attention  to  me  here.  But  I  am  nobody  here, 
—  nobody  even  takes  the  trouble  to  be  angry  with  me  I  And  I 
cannot  hate  you  all,  either,  though  I  wish  I  could.  Oh !  —  old  lady, 
go  away ! ' 

"  '  Na,  Miss  Khoda,'  said  I  ;  '  I  am  not  going  away.* 

"  '  That  ridiculous  Scotch,  too  ! '  cried  out  the  poor  bairn,  with  a 
sound  that  was  meant  for  laughter.  ♦  But  I  can't  laugh  at  it ;  and 
sometimes  I  want  to  be  friends  with  you.     How  do  you  know  that  I 


480  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

never  liad  a  mother  ?  for  it  is  quite  true  I  never  had  one,  —  never 
from  the  first  day  I  was  in  the  world.  And  I  love  papa  with  my 
whole  heart,  though  he  is  not  good  to  me ;  and  I  hate  every  one  that 
hates  him  ;  and  I  will  not  consent  to  live  as  you  live  here,  however 
good  you  may  pretend  to  be.' 

" '  But,  Miss  Ehoda,'  said  I,  *  what  ails  you  at  the  way  we  live 
here  ? ' 

" '  It  is  not  living  at  all,'  said  the  poor  bairn.  *  I  never  can  do 
anything  very  well  when  I  try  ;  but  I  always  want  to  be  something 
great.  I  cannot  exist  and  vegetate  as  you  quiet  people  do.  What 
is  the  good  of  your  lives  to  you  ?  I  am  sure  I  cannot  tell ;  but.it 
will  kill  me.' 

"  '  You  have  never  tried  it,  my  dear,'  said  I ;  *  so  whether  it  will 
kill  you  or  no,  you  can  very  ill  ken.  But  till  me  how  you  would  like 
to  be  great.' 

"  '  Why  should  I  speak  of  such  things  ?  You  would  not  under- 
stand me,'  said  Rhoda.  '  I  would  like  to  be  a  great  writer,  or  a 
great  painter,  or  a  great  musician,  —  though  I  never  would  be  a  ser- 
vant to  the  common  people,  and  perform  upon  a  stage.  I  know  I 
could  do  something,  —  indeed,  indeed,  I  know  it !  And  you  would 
have  me  take  prim  walks,  and  do  needlework,  and  talk  about 
schools  and  stuff,  and  visit  old  women.     Such  things  are  not  for  me.* 

"  '  Such  things  have  been  fit  work  for  many  a  caint  in  heaven,  my 
dear,'  said  I ;  'but  truly  I  ken  no  call  that  has  been  made  upon  you, 
either  for  one  thing  or  another.  Great  folk,  so  far  as  I  have  heard, 
are  mostly  very  well  pleased  with  the  common  turns  of  this  life  to 
rest  themselves  withal ;  and  truly  it  is  my  thought,  that  the  greater 
a  person  is,  the  less  he  will  disdain  a  quiet  life,  and  kindness,  and 
charity.  But  it  has  never  been  forbidden  you.  Miss  Rhoda,  to  take 
your  pleasure  ;  and  I  wot  well  it  never  will  be.' " 

This  surely  is  powerful  writing,  —  so  entirely  worthy  of 
Mrs.  Margaret  Maitland,  that  we  know  not  whether  we 
could  quite  equal  it  by  any  extract  of  the  same  length 
from  her  former  work.  There  is  much  quiet  power,  too, 
in  the  sketches  given  of  external  nature  in  the  present 
volumes,  and  much  originality  of  observation.  We  know 
not  that  we  ever  before  met  in  books  with  what  we  may 
term  the  echo  of  that  peculiar  sound  characteristic  of  a 
furzy  moor  under  a  hot  sun  which  is  so  well  described  as  in 


OUR   NOVEL  LITERATURE.  481 

the  following  passage.  All  our  readers  must  remember  the 
incessant  "  crack,  crack,  crack,"  which  they  have  so  often 
heard  when  the  sun  was  hot  and  high,  mingling,  amid  the 
long  broom  or  prickly  whins,  with  the  chirp  of  the  grass- 
hopper and  the  hum  of  the  bee  :  — 

"  Naw,  we  had  scarce  ended  our  converse,  when,  looking  out  at 
the  end  window,  I  saw  Rhoda  coming  her  lane  along  the  road  ;  and, 
seeing  she  might  be  solitary  in  her  own  spirit  among  such  a  meeting 
of  near  friends,  I  went  out  to  the  door  to  bring  her  in  myself.  It 
was  a  very  bonny  day,  a3  I  have  said,  and,  the  bairns  being  round 
upon  the  lawn  at  the  other  side,  there  was  but  a  faiMjff  sound  of 
their  voices,  and  everything  else  as  quiet  as  it  could  be  under  the 
broad,  warm,  basking  sun,  —  so  quiet,  that  you  heard  the  crack  of  the 
seed  husks  on  a  great  bush  of  gorse  near  at  hand,  —  a  sound  that  ever 
puts  me  in  mind  of  moorland  places,  and  of  the  very  heart  and  heat  o) 
sunny  days.  Rhoda,  poor  bairn,  was  in  very  deep  black,  as  it  be- 
hoved her  to  be,  and  was  coming,  in  a  kind  of  wandering,  thoughtful 
way,  her  lane  down  the  bright  sandy  road,  and  below  the  broad 
branches  of  the  chestnut  trees,  that  scarce  had  a  rustle  in  them,  so 
little  air  was  abroad ;  and  the  bit  crush  of  her  foot  upon  the  sand 
was  like  to  a  louder  echo  of  the  whins,  and  made  a  very  strange 
kind  of  harmony  in  the  quietness." 

This  wholesome  and  very  interesting  novel  is  calculated 
to  exert  a  salutary  influence,  and  to  yield,  besides,  much 
pleasure  in  the  perusal.  Like  all  the  other  works  of  its 
authoress,  it  is  thoroughly  truthful :  there  is  no  exaggera- 
tion of  character  or  incident ;  events  such  as  it  narrates 
occur  in  real  life  ;  and  the  men  and  women  which  it  por- 
trays may  be  met  in  ordinary  society,  though  the  better 
ones  ai'e  unluckily  not  very  common.  And  yet  a  wild 
romance,  full  of  all  sorts  of  marvels  and  monstrosities, 
could  scarce  amuse  so  much  even  a  youthful  reader,  far 
less  readers  of  sober  years.  In  nothing,  however,  has  the 
work  more  merit  than  in  its  representations  of  the  religious 
character.  Here,  also,  there  is  no  exaggeration.  The  nat- 
ural temperament  is  exhibited  as  exerting  its  inevitable 
influence.  Rhoda's  half-sister,  Grace,  for  instance,  though 
41 


482  LITERARY  AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

one  of  the  excellent,  is  not  at  all  so  lovable  a  person  as 
Mrs.  Margaret,  just  because  in  her  religion  was  set  on 
what  was  originally  a  more  wilful  and  less  loving  nature ; 
and  we  find  this  thoroughly  truthful  distinction  maintained 
throughout.  In  short,  this  latest  production  of  Mrs.  Mar- 
garet Maitland  is  a  book  which  may  be  safely  placed  in 
any  hands ;  and,  seeing  that  novels  must  and  will  exist, 
and  must  and  will  exercise  prodigious  influence,  whether 
the  religious  world  gives  its  consent  or  no,  we  think  the 
good  people  should  by  all  means  try  whether  they  cannot 
conscientiously  patronize  the  good  ones. 


XIII. 
EUGENE  SUE 

It  is  not  from  the  formal  histories  of  a  country,  as  his- 
tory has  hitherto  been  written,  that  the  manner  and  morals 
of  its  people  may  best  be  learned.  Its  works  of  fiction,  if 
they  have  been  produced  by  the  hand  of  a  master,  and 
have  dealt  with  the  aspects  of  contemporaiy  society,  are 
vastly  more  true  to  the  lineaments  of  its  internal  life  than 
its  works  of  sober  fact.  Smollett's  "  History  of  the  Reign 
of  George  11."  is  a  dull  record,  that  bears  on  its  weary 
series  of  numbered  paragraphs  no  distinguishable  impress 
of  the  character  of  the  age ;  whereas  Smollett's  "  Humph- 
rey Clinker  "  is  one  of  the  most  admirable  pictures  of  Eng- 
ush  society  during  that  reign  which  anywhere  exists.  The 
uevere  history,  with  all  its  accuracy  of  names  and  dates, 
wants  truth ;  the  amusing  novel,  that  seems  but  to  play 
with  ideal  characters,  is,  in  all  its  multitudinous  lights  and 
shadows,  a  true  portraiture  of  the  time.  And  the  rule 
seems  general.    Does  the  student  wish  to  acquaint  himself 


EUGENE   SUE.  483 

with  the  aspect  of  English  society  in  the  days  of  our  great 
grandfathers?  —  he  will  gain  wonderfully  little  by  poring 
over  heavy  sections  in  the  "  Annual  Registers"  of  Dodsley, 
but  a  very  great  deal  in  the  study  of  the  graphic  sketches 
of  Richardson  and  Fielding.  The  "  Waverley  "  of  Scott 
is  truer  beyond  comparison  to  the  real  merits  of  the  Re- 
bellion of  1741  than  the  authentic  history  of  Home,  though 
Home  was  himself  an  actor  in  many  of  the  scenes  which 
he  describes. 

It  is  partly  at  least  from  a  consideration  of  this  kind  that 
we  have  placed  at  the  head  of  our  article  the  name  of  one 
of  the  most  popular  French  novelists  of  the  present  day, — 
a  writer  whose  fictions  have  been  introduced  nearly  as  ex- 
tensively to  the  people  of  London,  through  the  medium  of 
cheap  translations,  as  to  those  of  Paris  in  the  original 
French,  and  which  are  widely  circulated  over  the  Conti- 
nent generally.  His  novels,  with  all  their  extravagances, 
give  a  striking  picture  of  the  state  of  society  among  at 
least  the  city-reared  masses  of  France,  and  are  singularly 
efficient  vehicles  in  spreading  over  Europe  the  contagion 
of  their  principles.  We  find  in  them  more  of  the  philoso- 
phy of  the  late  movement  in  Switzerland  against  the  Jesuits, 
though  they  contain  not  a  single  allusion  to  that  event, 
than  in  any  of  the  narratives  of  the  outbreak  which  we 
have  yet  seen.  They  serve  to  show  how  opinion  among 
the  anti-Jesuit  party  came  first  to  be  formed,  the  nature, 
too,  of  that  opinion,  and  how  it  happens  that  they  are  not 
merely  an  anti-Jesuit,  but  also  an  anti-evangelistic  and 
anti-tolerant  party.  Their  views  and  principles  are  exactly 
those  of  Eugene  Sue ;  and  their  numbers  bid  fair  to  increase 
over  Europe,  wherever  the  influence  of  his  writing  shall  be 
found  to  prevail.  But  a  brief  sketch  of  some  of  the  lead- 
ing characters  in  one  of  his  latest  and  most  characteristic 
works  —  the  "Wandering  Jew,"  of  which  we  perceive  a 
cheap  English  translation  has  just  appeared  —  may  better 
serve  to  show  what  his  fictions  teach  than  a  general  refer- 
ence to  their  tendency  or  effects.    Rome,  in  the  course  of 


484  LITERARY  ATfTD   SCIENTIFIC. 

its  history,  has  been  signally  damaged  by  two  great  revo- 
lutions in  religious  opinion,  —  the  Reformation  of  Luther, 
and  the  great  revolt  of  Voltaire.  The  revived  Christianity 
of  the  New  Testament  was  the  formidable  antagonist  with 
which  it  had  to  deal  in  the  one  case,  and  a  singularly  enthu- 
Biastio  and  fanatical  infidelity  the  enemy  "with  which  it  had 
to  contend  in  the  other;  and,  for  a  time,  the  injury  which 
it  received  seemed  in  both  cases  equally  severe.  But  they 
were  in  reality  very  different  in  their  nature.  The  wound 
dealt  by  infidelity  was  a  flesh  wound,  and  soon  healed  ; 
whereas  the  blow  dealt  by  the  revived  Christianity  ampu- 
tated the  members  on  which  it  took  effect,  and  separated 
them  forever  from  the  maimed  and  truncated  carcass.  In- 
fidelity dips  its  idle  bucket  into  the  sea  of  superstition,  and 
labors  to  create  a  chasm,  where,  in  the  nature  of  things,  no 
chasm  can  exist ;  there  is  a  momentary  hollow  formed,  but 
the  currents  come  rushing  in  from  every  side,  and  fill  it  up. 
But  evangelism  not  only  scoops  out  the  hollow,  but  also 
occupies  it,  leaving  no  vacuum  for  aught  else  to  flow  in. 
France,  in  less  than  an  age  after  the  canonization  of  her 
atheists,  had  again  become  popish  ;  the  tides  flowed  in,  and 
the  vacuum  was  annihilated :  whereas  evangelistic  Scotland 
is  as  little  popish  now  as  she  was  two  centuries  ago ;  for  in 
her  that  perilous  space  which  must  be  occupied  either  by 
religion  or  superstition  was  thoroughly  filled  by  the  doc- 
trines of  the  New  Testament.  The  remark  bears  very 
directly  on  the  nature  of  the  warfare  waged  on  Rome  and 
the  Jesuits  by  Eugene  Sue.  His  labors,  like  those  of  Vol- 
taire, serve  but  to  create  a  vacuum,  abhorrent  to  the  nature 
of  man. 

The  chief  group  in  his  recent  no\el,  round  which  all  its 
other  groups  are  made  to  revolve,  and  on  whose  designs 
their  destiny  is  made  to  hang,  is  the  Society  of  the  Jesuits. 
We  see  them  pursuing  their  schemes  of  ambition  and 
aggrandizement  undeterred  by  any  sense  of  justice,  and 
without  any  feeling  of  pity  or  remorse.  And  the  picture, 
ve  are  afraid#  is  scarce  exaggerated.    As  exhibited  in  this 


EUGENE   SUE.  485 

work  of  fiction,  there  is  no  part  of  it  so  blaok  as  to  be  with- 
out its  counterpart  in  real  history.  There  are  two  grand 
circumstances  which  have  conspired  to  render  the  Jesuits 
what  they  are,  —  the  specific  nature  of  their  principles,  and 
their  generic  character  as  a  society.  An  able  man,  possessed 
of  much  power,  who  held  by  the  principles  of  the  Jesuits, 
and  cared  not  what  means  he  employed  in  efiecting  his 
ends,  would  be  eminently  dangerous.  Their  principles  are, 
in  fact,  the  principles  of  the  great  bad  man,  who  subordi- 
nates to  his  designs  whatever  is  venerable  in  morals  or 
sacred  in  religion,  and  regards  the  end  as  justifying  the 
means.  The  Machiaevel-taught  despot,  whether  he  be  a 
Charles  I.  or  a  Louis  XIV.,  is,  to  the  extent  of  his  principles, 
a  Jesuit  on  his  own  behalf  But  then  the  individual  bad 
man  has  what  the  bad  society  has  not,  —  he  has  human 
feelings  ;  and  these  often  create  a  diversion  against  his 
principles  in  favor  of  his  suffering  fellows.  Even  a  Nero 
could  weep.  But  societies  have  no  tears :  they  are  abstract 
embodiments  of  their  principles ;  and  if  their  principles  be 
bad,  it  is  in  vain  to  look  for  protection  against  them  to 
their  feelings.  They  don't  feel.  Even  when  their  prin- 
cii^les  are  not  ostensibly  bad,  —  when  the  cord  by  which 
they  are  united  is  a  mere  love  of  gain,  —  it  is  too  much 
their  tendency,  as  well  described  by  Cowper,  to  become 
cruel  and  unjust :  — 

"  Man  in  society  is  lilie  a  flower 
Blown  in  its  native  bed :  'tis  there  alone 
His  faculties,  expanded  in  full  bloom, 
Shine  out,  —  there  only  reach  their  proper  use. 
But  man  associated  and  leaj^ued  with  man 
By  regal  warrant,  or  self-joined  by  bond 
For  interest's  sake,  or  swarming  into  clans 
Beneath  one  head,  for  pui-poses  of  war, 
Like  flowers  selected  from  the  rest,  and  bound 
And  bundled  close,  to  fill  some  crowded  vase. 
Fades  rapidly,  and,  by  compression  marred. 
Contracts  defilement  not  to  be  endured." 

But  when  their  end  is  not  vulgar  gain,  but  power,  however 
41* 


486  LITERAEY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

attained,  and  the  aggrandizement  of  a  false  and  bloody 
church,  —  when  their  jDrinciples,  untrue  to  the  first  laws  of 
morals,  strike  at  the  very  foundations  of  all  justice,  and 
are,  in  short,  what  Pascal  has  so  well  described,  —  and 
when  to  all  this  the  inevitable  lack  of  human  feeling  is 
added, — the  result  is,  not  a  corporation  of  ordinary  and 
every-day  iniquity,  but  a  society  without  parallel  in  the 
annals  of  the  world,  —  the  Society  of  the  Order  of  Jesus. 
And  so  Eugene  Sue  has  not  done  them  less  than  justice  in 
his  fiction.  Moliere,  in  one  of  his  dramas,  introduces  a 
character  who,  after  he  had  been  guilty  of  almost  every 
crime,  —  after  he  had  abandoned  his  wife,  cheated  his 
friends,  deceived  and  insulted  his  father,  and  made  an  open 
profession  of  his  atheism,  —  completes  the  climax  of  his 
infamy  by  becoming  hypocrite.  Eugene  Sue,  in  holding 
up  the  Jesuits  to  abhorrence,  improves  on  the  design.  Such 
is  the  character  which  he  gives  to  but  the  second  worst 
Jesuit  in  the  piece.  In  early  life  the  Jesuit  had  been  a 
traitor  to  his  country,  and  had  fought  against  it ;  he  had 
been  the  ungenerous  enemy  of  a  brave  and  honest  man 
who  abhorred  his  treachery,  and  had  pursued  with  bitter 
hatred  his  unprotected  wife  and  defenceless  children.  His 
prevailing  passion  was  a  vulgar  love  of  power  ;  and  in  order 
to  obtain  it,  there  was  no  intrigue  too  mean  for  him  to 
stoop  to,  no  crime  too  atrocious  for  him  to  perpetrate; 
but,  with  all  his  baseness  and  villany,  he  is  drawn  as  not 
wholly  devoid  of  human  feeling:  his  mother  on  her  death- 
bed enjoins  that  he  should  visit  her;  and  it  is  with  re- 
luctance, and  hesitatingly,  that  he  sets  aside  the  dying 
injunction,  and  sets  out  in  an  opposite  direction  on  some 
business  of  the  Society;  and  this  one  touch  of  inoperative 
human  feeling  is  rendered  a  sufficiently  grave  fault  in  the 
hands  of  the  novelist  to  reduce  him  from  a  first  to  a  second 
place  in  the  community  of  Loyola.  The  first  place  is 
assigned  to  a  wretch  whom  we  recognize  as  actually  a  man 
and  not  a  demon,  when  we  find  that  he  has  a  frame  which 
can  be  acted  upon  by  poison  and  the  cholera,  but  not  be« 


EUGENE   SUE.  487 

fore.  In  the  development  of  the  plot,  we  see  the  mach- 
inations of  the  Society  involving  in  ruin  all  that  is  good 
and  lovable  among  the  dramatis  personm  of  the  piece : 
the  just,  the  generous,  the  honorable,  —  the  unsuspecting 
maiden,  the  kind  master,  the  attached  father,  the  devoted 
friend,  —  all  become,  in  turn,  the  victims  of  the  meanest 
and  basest  villany ;  and  Jesuitism,  devoid  of  all  tinge  of 
pity  and  remorse,  exults  over  them  as  they  perish.  We 
do  not  wonder  how  the  admirers  of  such  a  work  should 
learn  to  hate  the  Jesuits.  It  seems  suited  to  accomplish, 
amid  the  superficiality  of  the  present  age,  in  the  innumer- 
able class  of  French  novel-readers,  the  effects  which  were 
produced  in  a  higher  order  of  minds,  rather  more  than 
a  century  and  a  half  ago,  by  the  "  Provincial  Letters  of 
Pascal."  The  English  reader  who  has  read  the  "  Wan- 
dering Jew  "  will  be  better  able  to  estimate  from  the  pe- 
rusal than  before  the  intense  hatred  of  the  Jesuits  which 
animated,  in  their  late  outbreak,  the  insurgent  Switzers  of 
Vaud  and  Argovia. 

But  we  can  see  no  elements  of  permanency  in  the  prin- 
ciples marshalled  against  them,  either  as  embodied  in  the 
characters  of  Eugene  Sue,  or  as  illustrated  from  time  to 
time  by  the  minute  portions  of  passing  history.  The  con- 
troversy does  not  lie  between  truth  and  error,  but  between 
antagonist  errors.  The  determined  assailants  of  priestly 
superstition  and  villany  are  themselves  the  asserters  of 
principles  which,  if  reduced  to  practice,  would  subvert  all 
public  morals ;  and  for  the  false  belief  which  they  would 
80  fain  extinguish,  they  would  substitute  an  unnatural 
vacuum,  into  which  other  false  beliefs  would  assuredly 
cfowd.  Nay,  in  the  fictions  of  Eugene  Sue  we  already  see 
the  phantoms  of  a  false  faith  crowding  into  the  gap.  All 
the  honest  devotees  which  he  draws  are  exhibited  as  weak 
in  proportion  to  the  strength  of  their  religious  feelings. 
Their  religion  is  represented  as  forming  a  mere  handle 
by  which  they  are  converted  into  the  tools  of  designing 
hypocrites ;    and  yet,  in  the   supernatural  machinery  of 


488  LITERARY  AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

the  piece,  we  see,  as  in  the  athestic  poetry  of  Shelley,  the 
elements  of  a  new  religion  coming  into  view,  and  embody- 
ing, in  an  incipient  state,  not  a  few  of  the  worst  errors 
©f  Rome.  One  of  the  leading  characters  in  the  novel  — 
a  young  lady  of  high  birth  and  talent,  whose  destruction 
the  Jesuits  at  length  effect,  and  are  rendered  detestable 
by  effecting  —  is  represented  as  adorned  by  qualities  the 
most  generous  and  lovable.  We  must  select  one  trait  of 
many,  not  merely  as  a  specimen  of  the  character,  but  of 
the  art  also  with  which  the  novelist  addresses  himself  to 
the  independent  feelings  of  the  French  people,  which  have 
been  so  prominently  developed  since  the  Revolution.  The 
heroine  of  the  following  passage  is,  as  we  have  said,  a  lady 
of  birth  and  fortune ;  and  it  is  a  poor  journeyman  mechanic, 
of  spirit  and  talent,  however,  who  is  the  second  actor  in 
the  scene :  — 

"  When  Adrlenne  entered  the  saloon,  Agricola  was  examining  a 
magnificent  silver  vase,  which  bore  the  words,  '  Jean  Marie,  working- 
chaser,  1823.'  Adrienne  trod  so  lightly,  that  she  had  approached 
the  blacksmith  without  his  being  aware  of  it. 

"  '  Is  not  that  a  handsome  vase,  sir  ? '  she  said,  in  a  silver-toned 
voice. 

"  Agricola  started,  and  rephed,  in  confusion,  '  Very  handsome, 
mademoiselle.' 

"  '  You  see  that  I  am  an  admirer  of  what  is  just  and  right,'  said 
Adrienne,  pointing  to  the  words  engraved  on  the  vase.  '  A  painter 
puts  his  name  to  a  picture,  a  writer  to  his  book ;  and  I  hold  that  a 
workman  who  distinguishes  himself  in  his  trade  should  put  his  name 
to  his  workmanship.  When  I  bought  this  vase  it  bore  the  name  of 
a  wealthy  goldsmith,  who  was  astonished  at  my  fantasies,  for  I  caused 
him  to  erase  it,  and  to  insert  that  of  the  maker  of  this  wonderful 
piece  of  art ;  so  that  if  the  workman  lack  riches,  his  name  at  least 
will  not  be  forgotten.    Is  this  just,  sir?  * 

"  *  As  a  workman,  mademoiselle,  I  feel  sensible  of  this  act  of 
justice.' 

" '  A  skilful  artban  merits  esteem  and  respect.  But  take  a  seat, 
eir.'" 

This  is  a  fine  trait,  and  the  character  of  Adrienne  is 


EUGENE   SUB.  489 

mainly  composed  of  such  ;  but  the  author  takes  particular 
care  to  iuform  us  that  she  is  not  a  Christian ;  and  when 
we  come  to  learn  her  views  on  marriage,  we  find  that  they 
are  exactly  those  of  Mary  Wolstonecraft.  The  sentiments 
which  she  is  made  to  express  in  the  following  scene  are 
not  unworthy  of  being  examined.  They  are  not  simjDly 
those  of  a  writer  of  fiction,  struck  out  at  a  sitting,  and  then 
given  to  the  world  merely  to  amuse  it,  and  keep  up  the 
interest  of  his  work:  they  are,  on  the  contrary,  widely  dis- 
seminated over  the  cities  of  Europe^  and  very  extensively 
acted  upon.  Socialism  in  our  own  country  ostensibly 
adopts  them  as  its  own  ;  and  there  are  many  not  Socialists, 
who,  though  the  usages  of  society  prevent  their  acting 
upon  them,  have  not  hesitated  to  adopt  them.  We  need 
scarce  remind  the  reader  that  the  subject  is  one  ujjon 
which  the  Saviour  has  authoritatively  spoken,  and  that  if 
he  be  Truth,  the  modern  theory  is  a  lie  :  — 

"  '  Something  is  wanting  to  consecrate  our  union  ;  and  in  the  eyes 
of  the  world  there  is  only  one  way,  —  by  marriage,  which  is  binding 
for  Ufe.' 

"  Djalma  looked  at  the  young  girl  with  surprise. 

"  ♦  Yes,  for  life ;  and  yet  who  can  answer  for  the  sentiments  of  a 
whole  life  ?  A  Deity  able  to  look  into  futurity  could  alone  bind 
irrevocably  certain  beings  together  for  their  happiness.  But,  alas* 
the  future  is  impenetrable  to  us ;  therefore  we  can  only  answer  foj 
our  present  sentiments.  To  bind  ourselves  indissolubly  is  a  foolish, 
selfish,  and  impious  action,  —  is  it  not  ?  * 

" '  That  is  sad  to  think  of,'  said  Djalma,  after  a  moment's  reflection, 
*  but  it  is  true.'  He  then  regarded  her  with  an  expression  of  increas- 
ing surprise. 

"  Adrienne  hastily  resumed,  in  a  tender  tone,  —  '  Do  not  mistake 
my  meaning,  my  friend.  The  love  of  two  beings  who,  like  ourselves, 
after  a  patient  investigation  of  heart  and  mind,  have  found  in  each 
other  all  the  assurances  of  happiness,  —  a  love,  in  short,  like  ours, 
is  so  noble,  so  divine,  that  it  must  be  consecrated  from  above.  I  am 
not  of  the  religion  of  my  venerable  aunt ;  but  I  worship  God,  from 
whom  we  derive  our  ardent  love.  For  this  he  must  be  piously 
adored.     It  is  therefore  by  invoking  his  name  with  deep  gratitude 


490  LITERARY   AND    SCrENTIPIC. 

that  we  ought  to  promise  not  to  love  each  other  forever,  —  not  to 
remain  always  together.' 

"  'What ! '  cried  Djalma. 

"  '  No,'  resumed  Adrienne, '  for  no  one  can  take  such  an  oath  with- 
out falsehood  or  folly  ;  but  we  can,  in  the  sincerity  of  our  hearts, 
swear  to  do  faithfully  everything  in  our  power  to  preserve  our  love. 
Indissoluble  ties  we  ought  not  to  accept ;  for  if  we  should  always 
love  each  other,  of  what  use  are  they  ?  and  if  not,  our  chains  are 
then  only  an  instrument  of  odious  tyranny.   Is  it  not  so,  my  friend  ?* 

"  Djalma  did  not  reply ;  but  with  a  respectful  gesture  he  signed 
to  the  young  girl  to  continue. 

" '  And,  in  fine,'  resumed  she,  with  a  mixture  of  tenderness  and 
pride,  '  from  respect  to  your  dignity  as  weU  as  my  own,  I  would  never 
promise  to  observe  a  law  made  by  man  against  women  with  brutal 
selfishness,  —  a  law  which  seems  to  deny  to  woman  mind,  soul,  and 
heart,  —  a  law  which  she  cannot  obey  without  being  a  slave  or  a 
perjurer,  —  a  law  which  deprives  her  of  her  maiden  name,  and  de- 
clares her,  as  a  wife,  in  a  state  of  incurable  imbecility,  by  subjecting 
her  to  a  degrading  state  of  tutelage  ;  as  a  mother,  refuses  her  all 
right  and  power  over  her  children  ;  and  as  a  human  being,  subjects 
her  son  even  to  the  will  and  pleasure  of  another  human  being,  who  is 
only  her  equal  in  the  sight  of  God.  You  know  how  I  honor  j  our 
noble  and  valiant  heart ;  I  am  not,  therefore,  afraid  of  seeing  you 
employ  those  tyrannical  privileges  against  me  ;  but  I  have  never 
been  guilty  of  falsehood  in  my  life,  and  our  love  is  too  holy,  too 
pure,  to  be  subjected  to  a  consecration  which  must  be  purchased  by 
a  double  perjury.* " 

Such  are  the  principles  of  this  Parisian  heroine,  and  such 
are  some  of  the  plausibilities  with  which  she  defends  them. 
There  are  two  other  female  characters  in  the  work,  twin 
sisters,  of  great  beauty,  whom  the  Jesuits  also  succeed  in 
destroying ;  and  they,  too,  are  devoid  of  religion.  Unlike 
Adrienne,  however,  they  are  not  intellectually  infidel,  — 
they  have  simply  never  heard  of  Christianity ;  and  when 
they  pray,  it  is  to  their  deceased  mother.'  Yet  another  of 
the  female  characters,  a  poor  seamstress,  possessed,  however, 
of  a  cultivated  mind  and  a  noble  heart,  finds  no  time  to 
attend  to  the  duties  of  religion  ;  and  when,  through  the 
Tiiachinations  of  the  Jesuits,  she   becomes  destitute   and 


EUGENE   SUE.  491 

wretched,  she  proposes  to  go  out  of  the  world  by  her  own 
act,  as  convinced  that  she  is  in  the  right  in  doing  so,  as  i^ 
wearied  and  overcome  by  sleep,  she  had  prepared  to  go  to 
bed.  She  is  joined  in  the  purpose  of  death  by  her  sister ; 
and  the  scene  throws  light  on  the  acts  of  social  suicide  so 
common  in  France,  and  of  which  we  have  had  a  few 
instances  of  late  years  in  our  own  country. 

"  The  sisters  embraced  each  other  for  some  miautes  amid  a  pro- 
found and  solemn  silence.    • 

" '  0  heavens,'  cried  Cephysi, '  how  cruel,  to  love  each  other  thus, 
and  be  compelled  to  part  forever  ! ' 

"  '  To  part ! '  exclaimed  the  Mayeux,  while  her  pale  face  was  sud- 
denly lighted  up  with  a  ray  of  divine  hope ;  —  'to  part !  Oh  no, 
sister,  no :  what  makes  me  so  calm  is,  that  I  feel  certain  we  are  going 
lo  another  world,  where  a  happier  life  awaits  us.  Come,  hasten ; 
come  where  God  reigns  alone,  And  where  man,  who  on  this  earth 
brings  about  the  misery  and  despair  of  his  fellow-creatures,  is  noth- 
ing.    Come,  let  us  depart  quickly,  for  it  is  late.* 

"  The  sisters,  having  laid  the  charcoal  ready  for  lighting,  proceeded 
with  incredible  self-possession  to  stop  up  the  chinks  in  the  door  and 
windows  ;  and  during  this  sinister  operation,  the  calmness  and 
mournful  resignation  of  these  two  unfortunate  beings  did  not  once 
forsake  them." 

We  had  intended  referring  to  several  other  points  in  this 
mischievous  work  of  fiction,  which  at  once  serves  to  exhibit 
the  opinions  entertained  by  no  inconsiderable  proportion 
of  the  anti-Jesuit  party  on  the  Continent,  and  to  spread 
these  opinions  more  widely.  Wherever  we  find  the  devo- 
tional feeling  introduced,  some  disaster  is  sure  always  to 
follow.  One  of  the  best  characters  in  the  novel  is  a 
highly  intellectual  and  generous  manufacturer,  more  bent 
on  ministering  to  the  happiness  of  his  workmen  than  on  the 
accumulation  of  gain.  He  provides  them  with  comfortable 
dwellings,  extends  their  leisure  hours,  gives  them  a  share 
in  the  profits  of  his  trade,  —  conducts  his  manufactory,  in 
short,  on  the  model  of  the  philanthropic  economist ;  and 
all  this  when  he  is  an  avowed  Freethinker;  but,  falling 


492  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

into  bad  health,  and  meeting  with  a  crushing  disappoint- 
ment, he  becomes  a  devotee,  loses  all  his  interest  in  the 
welfare  of  his  workmen,  becomes  enfeebled  in  body  and 
mind,  and  the  Jesuits  ruin  him.  The  wife  of  a  brave  and 
faithful  soldier,  a  thoroughly  excellent  man,  but  devoid  of 
all  sense  of  religion,  has  also  the  misfortune,  though  a  very 
honest  and  good  sort  of  person,  to  be  devout ;  and  the 
weakness,  like  the  dead  fly  in  the  apothecary's  ointment, 
imparts  a  dangerous  taint  to  the  whole  character.  And 
thus  the  lesson  of  the  tale  runs  on.  We  see  in  it  the  secret 
of  the  hostility  entertained  to  evangelism  by  the  insurgents 
of  Vaud  and  Argovia,  and  which  rendered  them  not  less 
tolerant  of  a  vital  Protestantism  than  even  the  Jesuits 
whom  they  so  determinedly  opposed.  We  see  in  it,  too, 
the  grand  error  of  Voltaire  repeated,  —  miserable  attempts 
to  create  a  blank  where,  in  the  nature  of  things,  no  blank 
can  exist ;  and  an  utter  ignorance  of  the  great  fact,  that  the 
religion  of  the  New  Testament  is  the  only  efiicient  antidote 
against  superstition,  and  a  widely-circulated  Bible  the  sole 
permanent  protection  against  the  encroachments  of  an 
ambitious  priesthood.  It  would  be  bold  to  conjecture  what 
the  rising  crop  of  opinion,  so  thickly  sown  over  Europe,  is 
ultimately  to  produce.  There  exists  a  widely-extended 
belief  that  Popery,  when  its  final  day  has  come,  is  to  have 
infidelity  for  its  executioner.  Do  we  see  in  works  such  as 
those  of  Eugene  Sue  the  executioner  in  training?  or  is 
the  old  cycle  again  to  revolve,  and  the  blank  formed  by 
infidelity  to  be  filled  up  by  superstition  ?  We  would  fain 
see  a  safer  expose  of  the  Jesuits  than  the  fiction  of  the  in- 
sidious novelist,^ — an  expose  at  once  so  just  to  the  oixler 
that  they  could  raise  no  effectual  protest  against  it,  and  so 
true  to  the  interests  of  religion  and  the  nature  of  man  that 
it  could  contain  no  elements  of  reaction  favorable  to  the 
body  it  assailed.  When  are  we  to  have  a  translation  of 
the  "  Provincial  Letters  "  at  once  worthy  of  Pascal  and  of 
the  existing  emergency  ? 


THE   ABBOTSFORD    BARONETCY.  493 


XIV. 

THE  ABBOTSFORD  BARONETOT. 

The  intimation  in  our  last  of  the  death  of  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  Sir  Walter  Scott,  and  the  extinction  of  the  Ab- 
botsford  baronetcy,  must  have  set  not  a  few  of  our  readers 
athinking.  The  lesson  of  withered  hopes  and  blighted 
prospects  which  it  reads  is,  sure  enough,  a  common  one,  — 
a  lesson  for  every-day  perusal  in  the  school  of  experience, 
and  which  the  history  of  every  day  varies  with  new  in- 
stances. But  in  this  special  case  it  reads  with  more  than 
the  usual  emphasis.  The  literary  celebrity  of  the  great  poet 
and  novelist  of  Scotland,  —  the  intimate  knowledge  of  his 
personal  history  which  that  celebrity  has  induced,  and 
which  exists  coextensive  with  the  study  of  letters,  —  the 
consequent  acquaintance  with  the  prominent  foible  that 
stood  out  in  such  high  relief  in  his  character  from  the  gen- 
eral groundwork  of  shrewd  good  sense  and  right  feeling, 
—  have  all  conspired  to  set  the  lesson,  as  it  were,  in  a  sort 
of  illuminated  framework.  Sir  Walter  says  of  Gawin 
Douglas,  —  in  his  picture  of  the  "  noble  lord  of  Douglas 
blood,"  whose  allegorical  poem  may  still  be  perused  with 
pleasure,  notwithstanding  the  veil  of  obsolete  language 
which  mars  its  sentiment  and  obscures  its  imagery,  —  that 
it  "  pleased  him  more  " 

"  that  in  a  barbarous  age 

He  gave  rude  Scotland  Virgil's  page. 
Than  that  beneath  his  rule  he  held 
The  bishopric  of  fair  Dunkeld." 

Not  such,  however,  was  the  principle  on  which  Sir  Walter 
estimated  his  own  achievements  or  prospects.    It  pleased 
42 


494  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIPIC. 

him  more  to  contemplate  himself  in  the  character  of  the 
founder,  as  seemed  likely,  of  a  third-rate  border  family,  — 
of  importance  enough,  however,  to  occupy  its  annual  line 
in  the  almanac,  —  than  that  his  name  should  be  known  as 
widely  as  even  Virgil's  own.  And  the  ambition  was  one 
to  which  he  sacrificed  health,  and  leisure,  and  peace  of 
mind,  with  probably  a  few  years  of  life  itself,  and  undoubt- 
edly the  very  wealth  which  for  this  cause  alone  he  so 
anxiously  strove  to  realize.  Never  was  there  one  who 
valued  money  less  for  its  own  sake  ;  but  it  flowed  in  upon 
him,  and,  save  for  his  haste  to  be  rich  that  he  might  be  a 
landholder  on  his  family's  behalf.  Sir  Walter  would  have 
died  a  man  of  large  fortune,  quite  able  to  purchase  three 
such  properties  as  that  of  Abbotsford.  And  in  last  week's 
obituary  we  see  the  close  of  all  he  had  toiled  and  suffered 
for,  in  the  extinction  of  the  family  in  which  he  had  so 
fondly  hoped  to  live  for  hundreds  of  years.  One  is  reminded 
by  the  incident  of  some  of  the  more  melancholy  strokes  in 
his  own  magnificent  fictions.  He  describes,  for  instance, 
in  the  introduction  to  the  "Monastery,"  a  weather-wasted 
Bione  fixed  high  in  the  wall  of  an  ancient  ecclesiastical  edi- 
fice, and  bearing  a  coat-of-arms  which  no  one  for  ages  before 
had  been  able  to  decipher.  Weathered  as  it  was,  however, 
it  was  all  that  remaiued  to  testify  of  the  stout  Sir  Halbert 
Glendinuing,  who  had  so  bravely  fought  his  way  to  a 
knighthood  and  the  possession  of  broad  lands,  but  whose 
wealth  and  honors,  won  solely  by  himself,  he  had  failed  to 
transmit  to  other  generations,  and  whose  extinct  race  and 
name  had  been  lost  in  the  tomb  for  centuries.  Henceforth 
the  honors  of  the  Abbotsford  baronetcy  will  be  exhibited 
on  but  a  hatchment  whitened  with  the  painted  tears  of  the 
herald.  A  sepulchral  tablet  in  Dryburgh  Abbey  will  form, 
if  not  their  only  record,  as  in  the  imaginary  case  of  the 
knight  of  Glendinning,  at  least  their  most  striking  memo- 
rial. 

It  is  a  curious  enough  fact,  that   Shakspeare,   like  Sir 
Walter  Scott,  cherished  the  ambition  of  being  the  founder 


THE  ABBOTSFORD   BARONETCY.  495 

of  a  family.  "  All  his  real  estate,"  says  one  of  his  later 
biographers,  Mr.  C.  Knight,  "  was  devised  to  his  daughter, 
Susanna  Hall,  for  and  during  the  term  of  her  natural  life. 
It  was  then  entailed  upon  her  first  son  and  his  heirs-male ; 
and,  in  default  of  such  issue,  on  her  second  son  and  his 
heirs-male  ;  and  so  on,  in  default  of  such  issue,  to  his  grand- 
daughter, Elizabeth  Hall ;  and,  in  default  of  such  issue,  to 
his  daughter  Judith  and  her  heirs-male.  By  this  strict 
entailment,"  remarks  the  biographer,  "it  was  manifestly 
the  object  of  Shakspeare  to  found  a  family;  but,  like  many 
other  such  purposes  of  short-sighted  humanity,"  it  is  added, 
"the  object  was  not  accomplished.  His  elder  daughter 
had  no  issue  but  Elizabeth,  and  she  died  childless.  The 
heirs-male  of  Judith  died  before  her.  And  so  the  estates 
were  scattered  after  the  second  generation ;  and  the  de- 
scendants of  his  sister  were  the  only  transmitters  to  pos- 
terity of  his  blood  and  lineage."  We  see  little  of  the  great 
poet's  own  character  in  his  more  celebrated  writings ;  he 
was  too  purely  dramatic  for  that;  and,  like  the  "  mirror 
held  up  to  nature  "  of  his  own  happy  metaphor,  reflected 
rather  the  features  of  others  than  his  own.  It  is,  however, 
a  curious  fact,  that  in  the  portion  of  his  writings  which  do 
most  exhibit  him  —  his  sonnets  —  there  is  no  pleasure  on 
which  lie  dwells  half  so  much  as  the  pleasure  of  living  in 
one's  posterity.  And,  in  urging  the  young  friend  to  whom 
these  exquisite  compositions  are  addressed  to  marry,  he 
rings  the  changes  on  this  motive  alone  throughout  twenty 
sonnets  together.  We  rather  wonder  how  the  circumstance 
should  have  escaped  the  thousand  and  one  critics  and 
commentators  who  have  written  on  Shakspeare,  but  cer- 
tain it  is  that  an  intense  appreciation  of  the  sort  of  pro- 
spective, shadowy  immortality  that  posterity  confers  on  the 
founder  of  a  family  forms  one  of  the  most  prominent  fea- 
tures of  the  poetry  in  which  he  most  indulged  his  own 
feelings,  and  that  with  this  marked  appreciation  the  pro- 
visions of  his  will  thoroughly  harmonize.  He  tells  his 
friend  that  the  sear  leafless  autumn  of  old  age,  and  the 


496  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTIFIC. 

"  hideous  winter  "  of  death,  draw  near,  when  beauty  "  shall 
be  o'ersnowed,"  and  "  bareness  left  everywhere  ;  "  and  that 
unless  the  odors  of  the  summer  flowers  continue  to  survive, 
distilled  by  the  art  of  the  chemist,  they  shall  be  as  if  they 
had  never  been,  — things  without  mark  or  memorial. 

"  Then,  were  no  sammer's  distillation  left 
A  liquid  prisoner,  pent  in  walls  of  glass. 
Beauty's  eflfect  with  beauty  were  bereft, 
Nor  it,  nor  no  remembrance  what  it  was: 
But  flowers  distilled,  though  they  the  winter  meet, 
Leese  but  their  show;  their  substance  still  lives  sweet." 

And  then  the  poet,  with  the  happy  art  in  which  he  excelled 
all  men,  applies  the  figure  by  urging  his  young  and  hand- 
some friend  to  live  in  his  posterity,  as  the  vanished  flowers 
live  in  their  distilled  odors  ;  and  expatiates  on  the  solace 
of  enduring  throughout  the  future  in  one's  ofl'spring :  — 

"  Be  it  ten  for  one, 
Ten  times  thyself  were  happier  than  thou  art. 
If  ten  of  thine  ten  times  re-Sgured  thee; 
Then,  what  could  Death  do,  if  thou  shouldst  depart. 
Leaving  thee  living  in  posterity? 
Bo  not  self-willed,  for  thou  art  much  too  fair 
To  be  Death's  conquest,  and  make  worms  thine  heir." 

What  strange  vagaries  human  nature  does  play  in  even 
the  greatest  minds!  Shakspeare  was  thoroughly  aware 
that  his  verse  was  destined  to  immortality.  We  have  his 
own  testimony  on  the  point  to  nullify  the  idle  conjectures 
of  writers  who  have  set  themselves  to  criticize  his  works, 
without  having  first  taken,  as  would  seem,  the  necessary 
precaution  of  reading  them.  He  tells  us  in  his  sonnets, 
that  "not  marble,  nor  the  gilded  monuments  of  princes," 
would  outlive  "his  powerful  rhime."  And,  again,  address- 
ing bis  friend,  he  says  :  — 

"  I'll  live  in  this  poor  rhime 
While  Death  insults  o'er  dull  and  8peechless"ti'iljes; 

And  thou  in  this  shalt  find  thy  monument, 

When  tyi-ants'  crests  and  tombs  of  brass  are  spent." 


THE  ABBOTSFORD   BARONETCY.  497 

And  yet  again,  with  still  greater  beauty,  if  not  greater 
energy,  he  says  :  — 

"  Your  life  from  hence  immortal  life  shall  have, 
Though  I,  once  gone,  to  all  the  world  must  die. 
The  earth  can  yield  me  but  a  common  grave, 
"While  you  entombed  in  men's  eyes  shall  lie. 
Your  monument  shall  bo  my  gentle  verse, 
"Which  eyes  not  yet  created  shall  o'er-read. 
And  tongues  to  be  your  being  shall  rehearse, 
"When  all  the  breathers  of  this  world  are  dead; 
You  still  shall  live  (such  virtue  hath  my  pen) 
"Where  breath  most  breathes,  —  e'en  in  the  mouths  of  men." 

And  yet  this  great  poet,  so  conscious  of  the  enduring 
vitality  that  dwelt  in  his  verse,  could  find  more  pleasure  in 
the  idea  of  living  in  future  ages  in  his  descendants,  —  a 
sort  of  pleasure  in  which  almost  every  Irish  laborer  may 
indulge,  —  than  in  being  one  of  the  never-dying  poets  of 
his  country  and  the  world.  What  may  be  termed  the 
human  instinct  of  immortality,  —  the  natural  sentiment 
which,  when  rightly  directed,  rests  on  that  continuity  of 
life  in  the  individual  in  which  the  dark  chasm  of  the  grave 
makes  no  break  or  pause,  —  may  be  found,  though  wo- 
fully  misdirected,  both  in  the  sentiment  that  rejoices  in 
the  prospect  of  posthumous  celebrity,  always  so  shadowy 
and  unreal,  and  the  sentiment  that  gloats  over  the  fancied, 
delusive  life  which  one  lives  in  one's  descendants.  Shak- 
spearefelt  himself  sure  of  posthumous  celebrity;  and  find- 
ing it,  like  every  sublunary  good,  when  once  fairly  secured, 
valueless  and  unsatisfactory,  he  fixed  his  desires  with  much 
solicitude  on  the  other  earthly  immortality,  and  sought 
to  live  in  his  ofispring.  It  would  have  been  well  had  the 
instinct  been  better  directed,  both  in  Sir  Walter  and  his 
great  prototype  the  dramatist  of  Avon.  It  would  be  also 
well,  with  such  significant  lessons  before  us,  to  be  reading 
them  aright.  They  tell  us  that  the  longings  aftev  immor- 
tality, in  which  it  is  the  nature  of  man  to  indulge,  are  not 

to  be  satisfied  by  the  world-wide,  ever-enduring  fame  of 
42* 


498  LITERARY   AND   SCIENTrFIC. 

the  poet,  and  that  the  humbler  and  not  less  unsubstantial 
shadow  of  future  life  which  one  lives  in  one's  children  and 
their  descendants  is  at  least  not  more  satisfying  in  its  na- 
ture, and  that  it  lies  greatly  more  open  than  the  other  to 
the  blight  of  accident  and  the  influence  of  decay. 

Judging  from  the  history  of  the  past,  there  is  no  class  of 
men  less  entitled  to  indulge  in  the  peculiar  hope  of  Shak- 
speare  and  Sir  Walter  Scott  than  the  greater  poets,  —  men 
whose  blow  of  faculty,  ratiocinative  and  imaginative,  has 
attained  to  the  fullest  development  at  which,  in  the  human 
species,  it  ever  arrives.  Has  the  reader  ever  bethought 
him  how  exceedingly  few  of  the  poets  of  the  two  last  cen- 
turies have  bequeathed  their  names  to  posterity  through 
their  descendants  ?  No  doubt  by  much  the  greater  part 
of  them  —  ill-hafted  in  society,  and  little  careful  how  they 
guided  their  course  —  were  solitary  men,  who,  without 
even  more  than  their  characteristic  imprudence,  could  not 
have  grappled  with  the  inevitable  expense  of  a  family. 
Thus  it  was  that  Cowley,  Butler,  and  Ot way  died  child- 
less, with  Prior  and  Congreve,  Gay,  Phillips,  and  Savage, 
Thomson,  Collins,  and  Shenstone,  Akenside,  Goldsmith, 
and  Gray.  Pope,  Swift,  Watts,  and  Cowper  were  also  un 
mated,  solitary  men ;  and  Johnson  had  no  child.  Evei 
the  poets  in  more  favorable  circumstances,  who  could  noi 
say,  in  the  desponding  vein  of  poor  Kirke  White,  — 

"  I  sigh  when  all  my  happier  friends  caress,  — 
They  laugh  in  health,  and  future  evils  brave; 
Them  shall  a  wife  and  smiling  children  bless. 
While  I  am  mould'ring  in  the  silent  grave,"— 

even  of  this  more  fortunate  class,  how  very  few  were  happy 
in  their  offspring !  The  descendants  of  Dryden,  Addison, 
and  Parnell  did  not  pass  into  the  second  generation ; 
those  of  Shakspeare  and  Milton  became  extinct  in  the 
second  and  the  third.  It  would  seem  as  if  we  had  an 
illustration,  in  this  portion  of  the  literary  history  of  our 
country,   of  Doubleday's   curious   theory   of  population. 


THE   ABBOTSFORD   BARONETCY.  499 

The  human  mind  attained  in  these  remarkable  men  to  its 
full  intellectual  development,  as  the  rose  or  the  carnation, 
under  a  long  course  of  culture,  at  length  suddenly  stocks^ 
and  doubles,  and  widens  its  gorgeous  blow  of  a  thousand 
petals ;  and  then,  when  in  its  greatest  perfection,  transmis- 
sion ceases,  and  there  is  no  further  reproduction  of  the 
variety  thus  amplified  and  expanded  to  the  full.  Nature 
does  her  utmost,  and  then,  stopping  short,  does  no  more. 

Abbotsford,  a  supremely  melancholy  place  heretofore, 
will  be  henceforth  more  melancholy  still.  Those  associa- 
tions of  ruined  hopes  and  blighted  prospects  which  cling 
to  its  picturesque  beauty  will  now  be  more  numerous  and 
more  striking  than  ever.  The  writings  of  Scott  are  the 
true  monuments  of  his  genius ;  while  Abbotsford,  on  which 
he  rested  so  much,  will  form  for  the  futui-e  a  memorial 
equally  significant  of  his  foibles  and  his  misfortunes,  —  of 
bright  prospects  suddenly  overcast,  and  sanguine  hopes 
quenched  in  the  grave  forever.  Is  the  reader  acquainted 
with  the  poem  in  which  the  good  Isaac  Watts  laments  the 
untimely  death  of  his  friend  Gunston,  —  a  man  who  died 
childless,  in  the  vigor  of  early  manhood,  just  as  he  had 
finished  a  very  noble  family  seat  ?  The  verse  flows  more 
stiflly  than  that  of  Shakspeare  or  Sir  Walter  Scott,  for 
Watts  was  not  always  happiest  when  he  attempted  most ; 
and  there  is  considerable  more  poetry  in  his  hymns  for 
children  than  in  his  "  Pindaric  Odes "  or  his  "  Elegies." 
Still,  however,  his  funeral  poem  on  his  friend  brings  out 
not  unhappily  the  sentiment  which  must  breathe  for  the 
future  from  the  deserted  halls  of  Abbotsford  :  — 

"  How  did  he  lay  the  deep  foundations  strong, 
Marlcing  the  bounds,  and  reared  the  walls  along,        "^ 
Solid  and  lasting,  where  a  numerous  train 
Of  happy  Gnnstons  might  in  pleasure  reign. 
While  nations  perished  and  long  ages  ran,  — 
Nations  unborn  and  ages  unbcgan; 
Nor  time  itself  should  waste  the  blest  estate. 
Nor  the  tenth  race  rebuild  the  ancient  seat. 
How  fond  our  fancies  are!    *       *       ♦ 


\ 


600  LITERARY   AND    SCIENTIFIC. 

And  mast  this  building,  then,  —  this  costly  frame,  — 
Stand  here  for  strangers  ?    Must  some  unknown  name 
Possess  these  rooms,  the  labors  of  my  friend? 
Why  were  these  walls  raised  for  this  hapless  end. 
Why  these  apartments  all  adorned  so  gay. 
Why  his  rich  fancy  lavished  thus  away? 
The  unhappy  house  looks  desolate  and  mourns. 
And  every  door  groans  doleM  as  it  turns." 

We  find  we  cannot  better  conclude  our  desultory  re- 
marks than  in  the  words  of  the  London  "  Morning  Herald," 
whom  we  find  thus  referring  to  the  death  of  the  Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel, Sir  Walter :  — 

"  The  deceased  Baronet  was  the  last  of  a  family  which  it  cost  one 
precious  life  to  create,  and  for  whose  perpetuation  its  founder  would 
have  accounted  no  purchase  too  dear,  and  reckoned  no  sacrifice  too 
costly.  It  was  not  sufficient  for  the  head  of  that  house,  whose  last 
member  has  so  recently  quitted  the  earth,  that  he  stood  foremost  in 
the  ranks  of  celebrated  men  during  life,  —  that  he  secured  immor- 
tality upon  his  departure.  Beyond  the  prodigal  gifts  of  Heaven  he 
esteemed  the  factitious  privileges  of  earth,  and  treated  lightly  an 
imperishable  wealth,  for  the  sake  of  dross  as  poor  as  it  was  passing. 
The  memoirs  of  the  first  Sir  Walter — albeit  penned  by  no  unlov- 
ing hand  —  leave  painful  impressions  upon  the  minds  of  all  who 
have  made  for  themselves  the  character  of  the  great  magician,  as  far 
as  it  was  possible,  from  his  undying  works.  If  the  history  teaches 
anything  at  all,  it  is  one  of  the  saddest  lessons  that  can  be  brought 
home  to  humanity,  —  that  of  gigantic  powers  ill  used,  of  insatiable 
though  petty  ambition  derided  and  destroyed.  The  vocation  of  Sir 
Walter  Scott  was  to  enlighten  and  instruct  mankind  :  he  believed  it 
was  to  found  a  family,  and  to  become  a  great  landed  proprietor. 
To  achieve  the  ignoble  mission,  the  poet  and  the  novelist  embarked 
the  genius  of  a  Shakspeare,  and  the  result  is  now  before  us.  The 
family  is  extinct ;  the  landed  proprietor  was  a  bankrupt  in  his  prime. 
Who  that  has  read  the  life  of  Sir  Walter  but  has  wept  at  his  misfor- 
tunes, and  marvelled  at  the  sacrifices  heaped  upon  sacrifices,  freely 
made,  in  furtherance  of  a  low  and  earthly  seeking  ?  Heaven  pointed 
one  way,  human  frailty  another.  'Be  mighty  amidst  the  great,' 
said  the  former ;  '  be  high  amongst  the  small,'  whispered  the  latter. 
Ho  obeyed  the  latter,  and  lo  the  consequence  I    The  small  know 


THE  ABBOTSFORD   BARONETCY.  501 

him  not :  amidst  the  great  he  still  continues  mighty.  The  history 
of  Scott  is  the  history  of  mankind.  We  cannot  violate  the  will, 
expressed  or  understood,  of  Heaven,  and  be  happy.  We  cannot 
sinfully  indulge  a  single  passion,  and  not  be  disappointed.  The 
spiritual  and  moral  laws  which  regulate  our  life  are  as  constant  and 
invariable  as  any  to  be  found  in  matter.  Had  Scott  not  enlisted 
every  hope,  thought,  and  energy  in  his  miserable  aim  at  power  and 
position,  he  would  in  all  probability  have  been  alive  to-day.  He 
was  a  hale  and  hearty  man  when  the  failure  of  the  booksellers  com- 
pelled him  to  those  admirable  and  superhuman  exertions  which 
crushed  and  killed  him.  That  failure  would  have  been  nothing  to 
the  poet,  if  he  had  not  involved  himself  in  trade  in  order  the 
more  rapidly  to  secure  the  purpose  which  he  had  at  heart,  —  for 
which  he  wrote  and  lived.  '  The  spirits  of  the  wise  sit  in  the  clouds 
and  mock  us.'  All  that  Scott  bargained  for  at  the  outset  of  life  he 
possessed  for  an  instant  before  he  quitted  it  He  cared  not  to  be 
renowned,  —  he  wished  to  be  rich.  To  be  spoken  of  as  the  master 
of  prose  and  verse  was  nothing,  if  the  term  could  not  be  coupled  ") 
with  that  of  master  of  Abbotsford.  The  dream  was  realized.  Money 
came  in  abundance,  and  with  it  lands  and  increasing  possessions. 
The  mansion  of  the  laird  rose  by  degrees,  and  child  after  child 
promised  to  secure  lands  and  house,  as  the  founder  would  have  them, 
in  the  immediate  possession  of  a  Scott.  Then  came,  as  if  to  com- 
plete the  fabric  and  to  insure  the  victory,  honors  and  titles  fresh 
from  the  hand  of  Majesty  itself.  Nothing  was  wanting;  all  was 
gained,  and  yet  nothing  was  acquired.  The  gift  melted  in  the  grasp ; 
the  joy  passed  away  in  the  possession.  With  his  foot  on  the  topmost 
step  of  the  ladder,  Scott  fell.  His  ambition  was  satisfied,  but  Prov- 
idence was  avenged.  All  that  could  be  asked  was  given,  but  only 
to  show  how  vain  are  human  aspirations,  —  how  less  than  childish 
are  misdirected  aims.  Scott  lived  to  see  his  property,  his  house 
and  lands,  in  the  hands  of  the  stranger ;  we  have  lived  to  see  hia 
children  one  by  one  removed.    Is  there  no  lesson  here  ?  " 


6.   €ni.  '^^J^ 


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